Haru no Yōsei
by Aero Dream
Summary: As per an unexpected meddling Haruno Sakura ends in an 'Earth Land' with a crushed skeleton, and is picked up by a strange medic that looks disturbingly like an older her. Then she has to learn to live with the question: is it all just The Eye of the Moon Plan's success or is she really in a magic world? And that's what a never-ending search is about... welcome to Fairy Tail.
1. Prologue

**Naruto** is owned by Masashi Kishimoto.** Fairy Tail** is owned by Hiro Mashima.

**SPOILTER ALERT** –for the **entire current storyline** of both Manga.

**.:.**

**Haru no Yōsei**

(Spring Fairy)

**·:·**

_**Prologue**_

Consequences of being a weak girl in the Battle of the Greatest

**.:.**

"The clan will get his revenge. But now, little one, you've simply fallen to the Senju. And there will not be a third chance for you."

"I still can... avenge her-" the voice of the enemy was cut by wet coughs and a groan of pain.

She was there; being useless again as her teacher clenched and unclenched his fists. But there was no time to talk to that fallen man, because Madara seemed unimpressed about his lieutenant's death and was rambling about how might is right and the weak should just bite their bellybuttons and die, and he outlived his usefulness, and not to worry because if he needed him again he could raise him from death.

They were lucky about Madara's Darwinist way of seeing the world and his overconfidence in his power; if he used his Rinnegan to raise that man from the death the minute he died it all would go to hell and never come back again. They weren't ready for a round two, and less to take a shot at that old bastard.

'_This... this is so fucking sick.' _Sakura wasn't the type to curse that strongly, but those words held all the tiredness, weariness and resignation that she could feel. She _could not_ believe how always, without fail, something tended to make every mission she took so utterly Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. The fourth shinobi war was raging and she didn't expect it to be a walk in the park, but surely this war would be one of the cruelest to be written in history by the simple fact that the enemies were their deceased comrades, family and friends reanimated by that white haired bastard. Certainly... that was just too much.

"I will protect my comrades with my life. Even if that means ending with yours", Kakashi was at the brink of insanity right now... but he was a damn fine ninja, so he just gritted his teeth as his world and beliefs crashed painfully all around him. It was more than glaring that that nonchalant way of his was a flimsy mask, but now... Any minute he was going to break down. _Hard._

That's how he looked

Of all the masterminds... of all the people she could believe that caused virtually every single foul thing in Konohagakure for the past decades... Did it have to be _that_ man?

Did it have to be the one that shaped Kakashi as the man he was now?

Apparently, yes. And now, That Man was lying in the floor, utterly wrecked by Naruto's overkill jutsus –one after another after another– and Kakashi's edge with the Sharingan. He was at death's door and Kakashi was ready to deliver the final blow to close another chapter in the long story of his mistakes, walking towards the almost dead body with deceptive calmness, his original eye brimming with unshed tears and his Sharingan tearing blood from overuse of Mangekyo techniques.

"DON'T TRY TO LOOK GOOD SAYING SHIT LIKE THAT! _'I WILL PROTECT THEM WITH MY LIFEEEE'_? LIAR! YOU'VE BEEN ALWAYS LOWER THAN THE FILTHIEST SCUM! LOWER THAN EVEN ME! LIAR! **LIAAAARR!**"

There was some horrid parallel to how Naruto and she screamed 'Liar!' every time Kakashi made his stupid excuses, and she noticed it with a really sick feeling in her stomach.

Then it was Naruto's turn. She was sure he was going to try and talk the man out of his crazed revenge. She knew that Naruto would do it –because the parallels between them and his situation with Sasuke were enormous. And she dared to hope that, just like what happened with Zabuza all those years ago, this man would at least depart from life with some dignity –not like a rabid animal put down. Maybe Kakashi hoped that too deep down, because he didn't activate his Chidori.

She was right. Naruto did try it. But that man was just too mad right now and snapped at him before listening even a word.

"THEN FEEL IT IN YOUR SKIN! THE PAIN OF LOSING A WOMAN THAT'S IMPORTANT FOR YOU! AND YOU'LL CURSE THAT BASTARD TOO! YOU'LL CURSE HIM EVEN AFTER YOUR OWN DEATH!"

Sakura would've made an undignified remark if the situation wasn't so dire. He thought that he could take her on as if she was the same weak link of her genin days? That she'd just sit and die or ask Naruto to help her? At least she could avoid been a burden now, dammit!

Then- her body didn't respond. She was lifted of the ground as if she was a puppet, and immediately Kakashi left what he was doing to do to try and save her... but was pushed he back by some invisible force, followed by Naruto.

She saw in the corner of her eyes the slight –almost imperceptible– smirk in Madara's face. He was enjoying this. Madara seemed perfectly fine with some more pain on the shoulders of a Senju-related human –in this case Naruto.

'_THE BASTARD!'_ she roared mentally.

"SAKURA-CHAN!"

"Naruto!" she barked, knowing –just knowing– that her life was forfeited. Naruto wouldn't kill Madara before he kills her; he was too exhausted and hurt from his fight with That Man "It was my decision to come here. It was my weakness that allowed me to get trapped. It was my fault, because I insisted to come here even if I knew I'm not in the league. But don't you dare to go all Kakashi about it."

"We'll save you!" yelled forcefully the blond.

She shook her head "It's not your fault. It's not Kakashi-sensei's fault. It's not even Obito-san's fault." At this, the man watched her with an unreadable face. "I'll take a shot: her death was in a mission, she was killed because Kakashi-sensei didn't reach her in time... but you seem to forget that she was the same as her teammates. She just wanted to protect them and she bet her life on that little wish: to be able to return to the village... and laugh together." She had tears in her eyes, but she had to end it.

If she was going to die... at least she wasn't going to make her death a tragedy. At least she could talk to Naruto before he crossed his chest and devoted the rest of his life to the Memorial. And if she could alleviate Kakashi's pain... well, she was a medic for a reason.

"I know that... so Naruto... Kakashi-sensei... I was a burden to the end. At least allow my soul the peace of knowing... that I will not be the cause of you tears. Don't torture me like Obito-san and Kakashi-sensei have been torturing Rin all this years, don't make my death a sad excuse to become monsters and throw themselves in a never-ending world of destruction. I never wanted that. Because the worst pain... is to see you dearest persons killing each other... and not be able to do anything."

Kakashi was now silently -desperately- trying to reach her, with Naruto right at his side. But they were pinned to the ground by Madara with one hand wave, and their faces buried in the rock at just the right angle to let them get a full view of her.

"That's so heartwarming" commented Madara's cold voice "But at the end, you are still dead. That is the reason, you see, for the moon eye plan. To avoid more deaths."

"That's bullshit!" she hollered, feeling a sudden oppression on her body. So he was already crushing her... "The only reason I'm dying is because you are killing me, you dipshit!"

"Such filthy words coming from that delicate mouth" he mocked "you are dying because you got in the way of peace."

"The true evil is not to follow your stupid dream! It's to hurt other people in the process! And don't make me laugh, you are doing this because that silly rivalry with the Senju! If you were as wise as you say, you'd realize that the excuse of the worldwide genjutsu is plain moronic!"

Her legs suddenly broke, and she bit her cheek to avoid screaming.

"Silence!" commanded Madara suddenly livid of hatred "You do not know what you are talking about!"

But she snarled, even as her pelvis crushed under the gravity "Peace was not an Uchiha ideal!" she felt her hands break, but still used her screams to talk, giving a half crazed talk down to that man "All the wars inside of Konoha, every single-" her arms broke "-one... was... Uchiha's fault! And you are the head of that clan, even when you pretended to disappear! YOU HAD PLANTS INSIDE TO MAKE THEM DO IDIOTIC THINGS, LIKE YOU PLANTED OBITO-SAN TO CONVINCE THEM OF ATTEMPTING A COUP! NO WONDER THEY WERE HATED!"

"It was because those idiots refused to acknowledge us as equals!" bellowed Madara, losing his cool and breaking her ribs in an effort to shut her up "Because they always oppressed us! You know nothing! THEY TOOK EVERYTHING TO THEM, AND LET US ROT IN THE SHADOWS!"

Naruto was still half buried in the floor using all the energy he could to try and stand up, concentrating in focus all his might and chakra to avoid the gravity. Kakashi was looking at his student with despairing impotence.

Obito... he muttered with a raspy voice. "I'm dying anyway." Kakashi turned his head with a big strain and gave him a wide eyed expression. But the Uchiha kept talking. "That girl... is a little like Rin, don't you think? Always in the way... trying so hard that no one gets hurt... liking for some mysterious reason the moody cold bastard..."

"She's... like her. Yeah."

"A spitfire when angry, but still talks about some shit like me with an honorific. And she's... bringing good points."

"Yeah. She's always had a quick mind when she concentrates in something..."

"...that's not yearning over a cold bastard", he looked at Naruto. "And he... is just like me... fighting to reach her against his own weakness. Minato's son... Minato-sensei... he couldn't save his girl or himself. He saved a filthy treacherous village instead... and sacrificed his son to this fate. He was... the lowest scum that left behind the important ones... but at least he never broke a promise."

"You are pissing me off again, trash", said Kakashi hatefully.

Obito sneered viciously "Mutual sentiment, scum."

They looked into each other's eyes. And Kakashi understood when he saw the spinning Mangekyo Sharingan. Both of them could see the same flashbacks with their shared eyes.

Kakashi shouted at Naruto, who looked at them with a surprised and desperate face, Sakura's angry and agonizing shouts in the background. The plan was simple, and he nodded to both adults when he heard it. He just had one shot. And hell if he wasn't going to put it all on it...

Sakura was dead. She intellectually knew that she had no repair, not even by Tsunade-shishio, not with all her bones crushed and her skull two seconds away of suffering the same fate. So, even if she could no longer yell at Madara –_And making the usually unflappable monster lose his shit with some words is a cool way to go out_, supplied his more aggressive side with a prideful sneer– she grit her teeth and tried not to cry. At least, goddammit, she had to try and pretend being strong.

Then...

She numbly watched with eyes wide as saucers the sudden entrance of Naruto, who slammed a weird variation of the Rasengan on Madara's cranium. She recognized behind his teammate the black rip in the air from Kakashi's Kamui, and smirked when she saw the utterly baffled face the ancient man made before being engulfed in a dome of light. The most surprising ninja of Konoha, right there.

But there was a second Kamui in front of her, which ripped her out of the way of the enormous radius of Naruto's attack. She barely had energy to be aware... but Obito's scarred face was right in front of her. He was there, with an ugly twisted grimace frozen all over his features. And she was trapped in a world that was collapsing around her. Maybe because the pocket dimension was that man's to begin with, and he was almost dead.

But Kakashi was alive... right?

The man's eyes looked determinately at her as he tried to push her out of the dying place.

_His Mangekyo started to rip the space again just in front of her–_

–_She was closing her eyes, finally feeling the cold fingers of death–_

–_And he lost the light on his eyes before he could end his jutsu._

His last thought was how useless he still was, unable to save a girl or even his own ass... again.

Her last thought was how useless she still was, unable to at least stay alive and honor that man's last wish for her to be saved.

And the rest... was darkness.

* * *

**Notes**

I know it's a _very_ weak beginning. Or end. Or whatever you like to consider it. I mean, I couldn't think of _another_ way to do it. I'm sure Kishimoto's gonna do something 100 times more awesome with this freaking battle, but I needed the excuse. So just forgive this child of man, will you? She doesn't know better.

Tobi is a good boy. Maybe he's just_ insane, having flashbacks and dying_, that's what I think :)

On a side note, I'm trying to make a non-useless Sakura, but she's a complete idiot in love and this is planned to be a pairing fic (Maybe Laxus/Sakura, considering the timeline), so there will be a little of that.

Anyway, this is my first incursion in XOVER fanfiction with Fairy Tail and Naruto, and I saw a lot of Narutos traveling to Fiore so I decided to give it a shot with my less favorite character and try stuff her mouth with something called character development (and keep that development in that mouth). Oi! You hear me, Kishimoto?! The development doesn't work if you revert back your characters after a few chapters!

I know this is unoriginal, but XOVERS are my guilty pleasure and I always wanted to do something like this. So please be gentle... wait, that sounded wrong.


	2. Chapter One

**Naruto** is owned by Masashi Kishimoto.** Fairy Tail** is owned by Hiro Mashima.

**·:·**

_**Chapter One**_

The Hermit and the Girl

**.:.**

It Hurts.

It hurts, like hell's running through her veins and burning inside her bones.

It hurts so bad, she asks herself why she is _still_ alive.

It hurts, and she remembers why.

Then she smiles wryly and she knows; that it hurts so much because she failed again.

And she asks herself why it doesn't seem to hurt enough.

**oOo**

After countless hours swimming in blackness, she hears rough whispers in her ear, but doesn't understand. She could, maybe, if they were something remotely familiar. But the shushing and clipped sounds don't mean anything to her.

After some time, she feels like she could open her eyes. Slowly, painfully, she asks herself why she's feeling suddenly so alive. Could she hope that Obito's last technique worked?

But blackness wants to play with her a little more, so she returns to it.

**oOo**

She opens her eyes, and is surprised to realize that it doesn't hurt anymore. She tries to sit, but her body doesn't want to move... so she panics and tries to shove some chakra to see what was happening.

Then she sees a woman with long pink hair, several wrinkles and a pair of void red eyes, looking sternly at her and saying something in some hushes and clipped sounds that she doesn't get. She tries to talk, but her throat doesn't cooperate.

It doesn't matter, because she collapses again.

* * *

Finally the day arrived in which Sakura was able to incorporate and drink a strange and so very tasty soup, taking it cautiously because she knew that she hadn't eaten in ages and it would do her no good to force her stomach.

The woman said something, and she responded slowly. "I don't understand you, lady. But thanks for saving me. I don't suppose you could tell me something about the war? Madara? Konoha?"

Then it was the elder pink haired medic who seemed confused and mildly concerned. She quickly walked to an old desk and started turning the yellow pages of a really big book, but after some minutes she stopped and looked at her with a frown. Sakura couldn't decipher what she was saying, preoccupied with her delicious soup and her own thoughts.

She wanted to communicate with someone and ask about Naruto, but she suspected that she was concussed, recovering for almost being crushed to death by Madara and frankly she didn't feel like showing her face to the others... not if she couldn't move to assure them that she was fine.

Even so, a little smile made its way to her lips. Her dying screams distracted Madara long enough for Naruto to shove a giant Rasengan up his mouth. It was so freaking annoying, that the only thing she could do was die loudly and keep his attention on her long enough for Kakashi-sensei and Naruto to come up with something... she huffed and shook her head.

'_Who would've say that, pathetic people __have__ its uses'_, mused a little voice in her head.

Some few hours after the woman sit herself at her side and opened another heavy book, signaling to the things written in it and clearly wanting her to read. Sakura took a peek, and found that she couldn't understand a _thing _about the strange characters, so she shook her head. Then an idea came to her -a stupid idea, but she _was_ concussed- and made a writing motion in the air, to try and ask for something in kanji. Surely, with kanji being the dominant language of the world, the woman would let her weird local books aside and bring her some scroll. And the elderly nodded, walked out of the room, and returned with ink and paper.

She wrote down "My name is Haruno Sakura."

The woman's eyes widened before she stood again and brought another book. She compared the symbols one by one, and finally wrote down something "My name is Porlyusica"

Sakura frowned, at the abundance of katakana and almost unintelligible name, but decided to ask for some other thing "Why can you only understand my writing and not my speaking?"

Porlyusica took again her time, apparently translating. Her kanjis were neatly done, but apparently she had trouble selecting the ones to use "This is a foreign alphabet, used for _solid script_, 'Toyo no Kotai Moji'. I've never met someone who could _speak_ it before, besides naming the characters, so I can't understand you without the help of written characters and a _dictionary_."

"So you're speaking another language?"

"The entire _world_ speaks only one, so _you_ are the one speaking _another_ language." She wrote with a raised eyebrow.

The teenager nodded, letting the idiotic notion of the world changing universal language over her unconsciousness and biting her lip before writing again. "Where am I? Why am I here? How much time has passed?"

"This is my house. I dragged you here after stabilizing you; you had your entire skeleton _crushed_ and some dangerous cracks in your cranium. Your spine had hairlines and the fourth vertebra was a little chipped, but luckily it wasn't too damaged. It's been three weeks since I found you."

Sakura's mouth hung open for a second. She only knew of one woman, besides herself, that could made a constructive and reconstructive surgery in crushed bones successfully –even if it involved a lot of risk–, but piecing together an _entire_ crushed skeleton was something she wasn't sure even Tsunade-shishio would manage to do.

And she'd been out for almost a _month_?

"Where are the Elemental Nations from here?" she wrote evenly after gathering her bearings.

"I have never heard of them. In which part of the world are they?"

The young woman forced herself to keep herself calm and write "Never heard of them? Cloud, Fire, Rock, Grass, Tea, River..."

Porlyusica, once again, reached something from her library. This time it was a scroll, although a fragile looking one. She put it in her hands and Sakura scanned it intently.

'_This doesn't look like the continent'_ she thought panicking. _'Maybe she wants to pull my leg... but I don't... I don't think so...'_

"Where are you from, _human_?" wrote the elderly woman.

"Fire Country. It's not in the map. Is this the only one you have, lady?"

"It's a complete map of the world" wrote the woman, and watched alarmed how the little girl swayed in her place before falling flat in her face. "Great" she groaned out loud.

**oOo**

The next week was one of desolation, fear and a lot of tests made by Porlyusica on her head, but at the end Sakura decided that she wasn't in a genjutsu, she wasn't hallucinating (...probably) and she should just go to the outside world and see with her own eyes the lack of Hidden Villages. But her legs were still unresponsive and she couldn't do it just yet.

The elderly woman was very gruff and stated in very clear terms that she hated humans and would kick her out the moment she was completely healed, but decided to teach her at least a little of the language. Sakura, bedridden and bored out of her mind (Now she knew why everyone always was trying to escape from the hospital), decided that, effectively, she didn't have anything better to do. So the classes began.

Porlyusica was a hard taskmaster even if she didn't expect much from the girl, but she got a delightful surprise when Sakura showed an enormous ability of memorization and a great drive to learn what she taught her, from the alphabet to some bits about Earth Land culture.

Sakura told her that she believed to be in an alternate world, and the easy acceptance of the woman let her a little bit baffled and suspicious until she learned that Porlyusica was a 'foreigner' in that world too, from some place named _Edolas_. Unfortunately, the woman could not tell her how to return to her original world, even if she showed great interest when Sakura told her how she thought she arrived to that forest.

That was another thing. Porlyusica listened attentively when she talked about her world, but didn't pry overmuch-to the kunoichi's eternal gratitude. She might be a little talkative about the most general topics, but her training as a ninja prevented her for going and telling the woman about a lot of other 'confidential' things.

And she _really_ didn't want to talk about the Fourth Shinobi War.

Anyway, she surprised the old lady again when she told her that she was a medic too. Their conversations slowly grew more stimulating as Sakura learned more about the language; soon they were having deep discussions about anatomy, medicaments, herbs and diseases. Porlyusica was an **authority** in the fabrication of medicines and treatment of 'magical' diseases, but Sakura proved an incredible mastery over physical diseases, lesions or poisons.

Then... she learnt about Eternano.

"So basically", said Sakura with a broken accent that Porlyusica was trying extra-hard to erase "Magic is an energy created by the mix of a human spiritual energy and _Eternano_, particles of energy that can be found in the world."

The elder medic nodded "Yes. Eternano is an external source, present in all living things of the planet. The mages have the ability to combine Eternano with their own spiritual force through large amounts of concentration, and create magic spells using the resulting energy."

Sakura looked at her with her jaw slack and an almost fearful look. At Porlyusica's inquiry, she responded with a squeaky voice "Are you talking about _natural energy_? The energy of the world?"

"I suppose you could call it that" said the woman with a raised eyebrow "Is that so surprising?"

"Of course it is! It's just... I've rarely seen people trying to learn to do that in my home, and they are very few and far-between. Not only that, they risk transforming themselves in statues if they fail to find balance between their chakra and the one of nature. And here is normal to do that?"

"You told me that chakra was the mixture of two types of energies -mental and physical- in a living body, and that all the people had it even if just a few trained to use it" began Porlyusica. Sakura nodded "But here we use only one type of energy and mix it with eternano... you could say that those risks might not exist because that, or that eternano is not the same as the natural energy in your world."

"Just one type of... energy? It must be really intense, training to go on with just half of the energy we normally made." Sakura had naturally low chakra reserves, so if she tried to go on with only half... well, she would barely be a ninja at all.

"I always believed that humans had two different sources of energy inside, but couldn't prove it because the overabundance of spiritual energy in them... and I really don't want to bring more humans to my house" she said putting a hand in her chin "Could you show me? Your chakra?"

"Sure."

And so began a long series of interesting experiments, Sakura using her diagnostic jutsu to examine the woman and Porlyusica taking samples of her blood and hair. Together they discovered about the existence of both energies that created chakra inside of Porlyusica's body, although the woman insisted on making experiments with some other mages before they reached a conclusion.

Seeing that hermit who randomly screeched about having a 'human contaminating her house' suggesting to bring people to her house was a **big** clue about the sheer interest Porlyusica had in the discoveries being made.

When Sakura showed her the wonders of the Mystical Palm Jutsu and some other chakra treatments, she felt strangely proud of the rare smile that lighted the woman's face.

And so, between thick tomes of medicine and long classes about two different kinds of healing, a strong friendship was born between both pink haired females.

It had been three months. Sakura speeded up the process of her healing with some applications of chakra and was almost as good as new, but for some reason she didn't want to go yet. She was afraid to see the world and be forced to believe that it wasn't her home.

It was that horrible concern that had slowly installed in her mind.

What if ... Madara had succeeded in his Moon Eye Plan and all she was seeing was just an elaborate Genjutsu?

The idea made her tremble and feel nauseous for days. She tried to convince herself that it wasn't the case, but... Was it harder to believe than she somehow ending in a different dimension?

"You seem troubled"

"Porlyusica-san", greeted Sakura trying to get out of her brooding. "It's nothing, just thinking about the cellular stimulator that we've been trying to make."

"Hm... Actually I think we might be able to prove it. Makarov arrived with a girl that lost one eye." Said Porlyusica, clearly not believing her but letting it go.

Sakura stood from the chair she was sitting in and dusted a little the clothes that the woman lent her. She had gotten used to the long black dress and white sheet, but she still refused to use closed shoes, so her attire was bizarre at best and wacky at worst "Are you sure? I feel like we need to make more experiments before we can test it in humans."

"We are making an artificial eye, so it'll be fine if we include the cells from the other eye and try to see if it can regrow as an organic one", said Porlyusica walking leisurely to her study. "If it comes to the worst we could extirpate it and it will cause no lasting damage, but I'm sure the stimulator is ready. The last experiments were satisfactory, and I tried it on myself already."

Sakura raised both eyebrows. Testing a medicine in one self? THAT required guts. Tsunade had beaten into her skull to always use volunteers, so she could act quickly if there was a complication... she wouldn't be able to do that if she was the one hurt or sick, after all. Then again, Porlyusica regarded her highly even with her inexperience; She'd been a medic for just three years, even if she used procedures more secure and effective than the normally used in _this_ world and was the apprentice of the indisputable best of her world.

They entered the study calmly, and Sakura made a cursory exam of the patient with her eyes.

She was a red haired girl not older than twelve with a metallic armor, a mild case of malnutrition and a medical patch in her left eye. Sakura recognized the shy demeanor of a girl who had seen way too much, so it was with a dark sigh that she fixed her best jovial smile and stepped forward.

"Hi, my name is Haruno Sakura. I'll be one of your doctors this time."

"My name is Erza Scarlet" answered the girl with a quiet tone. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

An old and male voice interrupted her examination over the girl. "What's this? You having an assistant here? So rare of you, Porlyusica!"

Sakura turned her head to see... at a little man. Like _reaaally_ little man. Was it some kind of new species of magical creatures? The man didn't even pass over the twenty inches! He had one staff with a pink smiley face in his right hand, was dressed in some colorful clothes and a purple hat, and his face was old and merry. Maybe that was a dwarf?

The woman sighed "Keep silence. She's a physician, and we have been sharing medical knowledge for the past three months."

"Have you, now?" asked intrigued the old man, scrutinizing Sakura with a hand on his chin. "You know about medicine, youngling?"

"If I didn't know about it, Porlyusica-san wouldn't have said it" remarked the kunoichi shaking her head and taking a book from a shelter.

The little man let out a booming laugh "She's like a mini-you, Porlyusica, even more with that hair! Wait... don't tell me... Is she your unofficial daughter?! I didn't take you as _that_ kind of woman!"

Sakura felt a vein jump in her forehead, but dismissed the man in pro of examining the girl's eye socket. Nevertheless she stopped when Porlyusica attacked the old geezer with a mop that was nearby, berating him for his vulgar words.

The young medic watched her benefactor chase the man with a surprised face. She had never seen her act like that before, but that might be because Sakura was generally polite and recovering from almost fatal injuries, so the elder woman didn't feel the need to attack her with the cleaning supplies.

The old man shouted something about her being once young and having a beautiful booty that now was all shaggy, making Porlyusica take a mad swing at his head.

"What a pervert" muttered Sakura, secretly glad that Porlyusica didn't seem as prone as Tsunade to demolish things when angered. She could only imagine what she would do to the diminutive old man. "Sorry, Erza-chan. We're going to begin when Porlyusica-san cools down a little"

"It's okay", said Erza with a nod. "I don't mind waiting."

A few minutes later Porlyusica entered the room with a frown, followed by the tiny old man sporting a large bump in his head.

"It doesn't show signs of infection or thorn tissue in the inside, but the eyelids are scarred", informed Sakura.

She could only think of one way to make that kind of damage to an eye. And she would feel revolted by it, really, if she hadn't been fighting with freaking zombies just three months ago and listening about Kabuto's and other similar sickos' endeavors.

Porlyusica nodded somberly.

**oOo**

The only thing that we have to know is that the surgery went without a hitch, and the two elders were waiting patiently for Erza to wake from the anesthetics Sakura _insisted_ putting her on. It didn't matter that the girl wasn't squeaky or that the surgery didn't hurt; if they were treating the kid with a new method of 'magical jutsu' as she secretly called it, she wasn't going to risk it.

"We haven't been introduced properly" said suddenly the man, perched in a high chair. Sakura lifted her sight from the book she was reading. "My name is Makarov Dreyar. I'm Fairy Tail's master."

Sakura furrowed her eyebrows "Fairy... Tail... oh, you mean the Guild? Well, nice to meet you. I'm Haruno Sakura, a medic."

"So I've heard", chuckled Makarov- "You've known Porlyusica for too long?"

"Just three months. She... saved my life and kept me here until I recovered."

"Your life?"

Sakura nodded but didn't elaborate, and was relieved when the man didn't seem bothered by it. Porlyusica looked at her with a pensive look.

"Actually you _are_ perfectly healthy now" she said "It's time for you to start packing. I don't like to have humans in my home."

"That's okay" shrugged Sakura "I'll go and see what I can make myself useful for, now that I can move around."

She _had_ expected the older woman to say that, even if Porlyusica warmed up to her a lot in the past months. After all, she could see that only her medical interest was keeping her from openly kick her out, and Porlyusica was_ really_ uncomfortable with 'humans' near her. Besides, Sakura couldn't just keep freeloading there forever.

"You don't have a place?" asked Makarov with just a tiny hint of _something_ that made Sakura automatically raise her guard

'_They are both trying to bring something up' _"No, I don't."

"Any family?"

Sakura thought about it. If she said that she lived far away, it could open to a few difficult questions. "No."

"I see. Do you know how to use magic?"

"She knows" intruded Porlyusica. "A watered down version of Healing Magic and some tricks in combat."

"Healing magic? The Lost Magic?" asked very interested Makarov. The woman nodded "Hm... one final question. Do you know what a guild is?"

"A place where mages congregate to take missions under a commission..." she started to recite what she read about those places, but her eyes widened before she could finish "Are you asking me to join... your Fairy Tail?"

"That way you will have a job, money and the support of a Guild" said Porlyusica serenely. "And the paperwork to register you as a citizen of Fiore will go ten times faster that if you don't have any connection."

Ah, of course. She was technically an illegal foreigner with no past and no business to do in Fiore, and even if the government was very lax about the people who entered the place, she wouldn't be able to get a good job or even be part of the merchant guilds. For what she had heard about Guilds, they were greatly similar to the system of a Hidden Village, without the militarized aspect or the unshakable ties to the government.

And she was getting served the chance to ease considerably her life -at least until she discovered a way to go back to her home- in a silver plate; right there, from none other than the _Master_ of Fairy Tail. She bowed "Thank you very much for the opportunity. What are the requisites, Master Makarov?"

The old man beamed from his stool "You'll know when we get to the Guild!"

**oOo**

When Erza awoke, crying of joy about her new eye and thanking over and over Porlyusica and Sakura, both medics went apart to give the girl time to cool down and dry her tears.

"Here, take this".

Sakura received curiously a lemon green duffle bag with various flasks filled with medicines and herbs... and her old kunai pouch. Hm. So that's how she knew about the 'combat tricks'. Anyway she beamed at Porlyusica "Thank you very much; I'll use them well..." the woman nodded calmly "And thanks for everything, really."

"I'm a medic, that's what I do best."

Sakura nodded and lowered her eyes "Then... I think this is goodbye."

"What are you talking about, you silly girl? You have to keep the reports about the new treatment of regeneration on that child, and you'll have free access to Mages to continue with our tests on Physical energy. Don't you dare to disappear with all our projects unfinished", ordered the woman with a no-nonsense voice.

Sakura giggled quietly "I'd never do that, Porlyusica-san. I'll come and visit frequently, promise."

"Bah. Don't make it too often… I'll pass a good half year airing out your human stench of my home."

"Hum… okay…" said uncertainly the kunoichi. She knew through the tests on the old woman magic that she wasn't an ordinary granny, so she didn't know if the woman was being serious or just difficult.

"Take care of yourself", said Porlyusica, "and of those foolish children of Makarov. They are quite the handful."

"I'm a medic, that's what I do best" she shrugged with a grin. Porlyusica shook her head, that rare smile returning to her face.

In that moment, Makarov and Erza emerged from the giant tree that was the medic's home. "Are you ready to go, Sakura?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I'll visit you later, Porlyusica."

"Don't", snapped the woman aloofly.

Makarov just chuckled again.

* * *

I always open my fics with 2 posts in a row. Makes me a little more confident in that the idea isn't just gonna go away.

Review?


	3. Chapter Two

**Naruto** is owned by Masashi Kishimoto.** Fairy Tail** is owned by Hiro Mashima.

**·:·**

_**Chapter Two**_

Drinks all around and some Naruto look-alike

**.:.**

Sakura could not bring herself to close her mouth.

Magnolia was _gorgeous_, in an exotic way that she never even dreamed could exist. All the houses looked bulkier, bigger and stronger than the ones in Konoha, made principally of bricks and cement –she would've asked how they managed to carry all the materials, but she'd read about magic enough to make an idea by herself. The streets were cobbled with clear stones, she could see boulevards with some trees and bushes symmetrically spaced and pruned. The city was surrounded by some waterways that seemed to disembogue in an enormous, deep blue lake. To her right, a busy place showed what she vaguely remembered was a _train_, slowly moving forwards in its tracks.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" asked Erza after some minutes of Sakura drinking the sights in awed silence "The first time I came here I sat in a bench for four hours to look at the houses."

"Yeah. I've never seen something like this before. This place looks so resilient..."

Erza blinked, and even Makarov turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow "Looks _resilient_?"

"You can see the wide berths in which the houses are built, so if one of them collapses it won't affect its neighbors too badly; the thick walls with cement and bricks, the big and clear pathways to allow better mobility all reinforced with stone, and the streets are ample enough to evacuate the people without creating unmovable crowds..." she trailed off.

That was one thing that she and every shinobi of Konoha had fresh in their minds: a town's structural strength. After Pain flattened the village completely they had to rebuild everything from scratch, so naturally every damn ninja got to help speed the process at least three times before heading to the front lines and other important missions, and she was not exception. The shinobi, being quite the pragmatist bunch, didn't talk about the beauty of the constructions as much as the _durability_. Yeah, it wouldn't do much against another guy with Pain's god-like abilities... like Madara... but the flimsy idea to reinforce every cranny so no madman got an easy shot again served greatly to appease the nervousness of all the people; it helped to soothe the trauma of dying and getting better the same day, and the paranoia the ninjas were having about another almost-all-powerful man coming to town.

So she, being bookworm extraordinaire Sakura Haruno, got a lot of knowledge about what to look at to recognize a sturdy town.

"Well, it _is_ a strong city" there was Makarov's wonderful ability to not press too much on what obviously were some weird things on Sakura's part. "Actually it was reinforced recently."

"Something happened?" she asked concerned.

"_Gildartz_ happened" Makarov shook contritely his head "He's really absentminded, tends to demolish buildings without even touching them and gets lost around the town all the time. The citizens thought that they could stop Gildartz from punishing their houses and pockets if the city was reinforced, so..."

Now Sakura raised her eyebrow. How could an absentminded guy _punish_ houses _without touching_ _them_ while getting himself _lost?_ Maybe he was an easily irritated individual, something like "_You foolish house. I am lost again and it's your fault- Shinra Tensei!"_

She snorted, imagining that Nagato guy raging at a building for getting him lost. And knowing what Naruto told her about him, he probably would justify it with an _'It had to know the consequences for getting in the way of GOD'._

Yeah, that was ridiculous.

"What are you thinking about?" inquired Erza curiously.

Sakura shook her head "I'm just being really, really dumb. Don't worry."

**oOo**

A good hour and a half later, they arrived to a very peculiar –even between all the weird architecture around– building. The entrance door was big, with a giant wooden sign that said FAIRY TAIL in blue characters. There were too many ornaments, but the brick walls and columns seemed particularly strong. It'd make sense, if the Gildartz guy ever got the urge to 'punish' the place and there were mages inside.

"And this is our guild" announced Makarov proudly, "Fairy Tail! What d' ya think, Sakura?"

"Looks stronger than the city," smiled the teenager "and more colorful." She found the building to be quite bizarre, but she wasn't saying that; had to make a good image for herself in her first day, after all.

He laughed again "Well, that's good to hear. Then let's go, both of you."

"Yes, master."

The inside was spacious and warm, with a lot of polished wood and tables scattered around a big hall. A cheerful chatter filled the place when they entered, but some mages stood up and went to Makarov when they saw him in the gates.

"Welcome back, Master" "How's Erza-chan?" "Did everything go well?" "Who's the new girl?"

The master greeted every person that arrived with a wave, and after answering the questions hauled Sakura to a counter where a round-faced dark-skinned girl was serving drinks. Her expression was soft and calm.

"Hey, Chico, bring the stamp here, will ya?"

"Of course, master" Chico left the drinks on the counter and searched for something under it. She emerged with a big square stamp in one hand and gave a once over to Sakura "Where do you want it?"

"Wait a minute" spoke Sakura with a frown. "Just like that? Wasn't there a test or something?"

"Why would we need a test? You can do magic" said Makarov dismissively "Besides Porlyusica thinks you have what it takes. That's good enough."

Sakura didn't like the feeling of having passed just because of someone she knew, but reasoned that a woman like _Porlyusica_ wouldn't just recommend anyone. Also she seemed to be a sort of old friend to Makarov, so he'd probably trust her judgment.

She shrugged. She had a job, right? As master said, that's good enough.

"I'd like it... in my left arm" she lifted the sleeves of her blouse and signaled the same place where the ANBU wore their marks. She thought it strangely fitting. Nostalgia, maybe.

"Which color?"

"Hum... Pink?"

"Are you sure?" the teenager rose both eyebrows "You have a lot of pink on you already, don't you?"

"It's just my hair!" she defended. Well, she normally used a lot of pink in her clothes, but that girl didn't know that, did she? "Besides I like pink."

"Have it you way, pink princess." Chico shrugged, raising the stamp.

Sakura pursed her lips. She didn't like how that sounded; _'Little princess Sakura, who passed her life riding on a pink cloud'_ "Wait, fine. Make it orange."

Again, nostalgia.

The other girl nodded with a soft smile and pressed the thing on the spot she signaled. Sakura nodded her thanks "Do you know where I can search for some place to stay?"

That proved to be the wrong question. Or, better said, she asked the wrong person. Or was it a little of both things? But seconds ago Chico seemed to be chatting normally! Who would've thought she could suddenly talk that _slow_? She answered unhurriedly... and talked... and talked. And thirty minutes later Sakura was tempted to punch her in the face and be done with that, except that this was not Konoha, she wasn't the Hokage's apprentice and it was her first day in Fairy Tail. But for god's sake, it was like talking with a half-asleep Shikamaru! Except that this girl actually was saying _everything_ about _everything_.

Not to be confused, she loved when people explained things thoroughly and she loved learning new things, but after the fifth time the girl giggled and dreamily talked about a so called "Laxest" she had to make her stop. She wasn't that bad with Sasuke, was she?

'_Of course you were'_ mocked her more unpleasant side _'Don't you remember those three hour talks about your 'Sasuke-kun' with Ino?'_

Sakura blushed crimson. Yeah, she was a mindless fangirl that time. But still, she was twelve and an idiot. Chico... actually looked to be a pair of years younger than her...

"Well" she interrupted, trying not to sound too much pissed. The girl _had_ answered her questions... and all the questions she could've had about Fairy Tail, along some questions she'd never ask about Laxest. "Do you have a doctor here? I might have something to give them."

"Doctor? No, we don't. We normally go to the hospital if is a physical thing or ask master if it has to do with magic, but..."

"What about an infirmary?" Sakura pressed. She had the medicines Porlyusica gave her, and the old woman had asked her to take care of 'Makarov's children' whoever they were, so she needed at least some place to start doing that caring. "A sick room?"

"Well, we have one, but it's rarely used. Over there" she signaled to a door at the back of the hall.

"Thanks"

The infirmary, it resulted, was poorly maintained and in such a sad air of abandonment that Sakura for a moment had a vision of Tsunade-shishio barging angrily in Makarov's office and demanding the heads of the idiots who dared to keep it like that. And that would be his head, because he was the supposed 'Master' of the place. One could do a lot of things to anger her blonde teacher, but forsaking a place supposed to be taking care of the ill was a disrespect of her profession. And Tsunade _hated_ disrespect-except maybe when it was Naruto's, and that because she knew that he was just a socially inept but well intentioned kid.

After shaking her head, Sakura inspected the place carefully. The few medicines were up to date and had the signature of being made by Porlyusica, but they had nothing else asidwes of some bandages and gauzes as first aid. The beds were dusty, the drapes were worse and she cringed when she saw the grime in the floor.

"Who dares to call this 'infirmary'? It looks more like a graveyard!" she hissed loudly, already making a list of the things that she'd need to make the place worth of its name.

"Well, there's a sad lack of medics that can use magic. Or that want to work for Fairy Tail, for that matter. It's best if the mages just go to the hospital" said a voice behind her.

She spun on her heels, startled. There was Master Makarov, with his eyes closed in a content expression and a mug of beer in his hands.

'_Great, _another_ alcoholic boss'_ "Even so, at least you could keep clean this place!" she argued with a hand on her hips "It's _really_ disgusting."

"We have waitresses and cleaners, but they just work in the bar" shrugged Makarov taking a long sip of his tankard "And none of the mage girls is old enough to give this guild a feminine touch".

Sakura huffed "It's not about a nonsensical 'feminine touch'! It's just basic hygiene!"

"Which is something that a bunch of old male mages lack, especially over things that they don't really use" noted wisely the man. "I mean, _you_ are our older girl here, and the only one besides Chico, Cana and Erza... But this is a conversation for later. Why don't you go to the hall? We're having a party to celebrate Erza's eye and your arrival".

"A... party...? okay, I'm game" she smiled, wondering when was the last time she had been in one.

The 'party' was very straightforward: just a bunch of people fighting to see who could get drunk faster. But it was thanks to the general inebriety that Sakura could go and get to know people better without feeling too overwhelmed by the cultural shock; she learned that Wakaba Mine was a laidback pervert and was considering to find a woman because Macao Conbolt was already seeing a beautiful and young woman (or he said something like that, in that drunken slur that can't get accurately translated); she learned that Reedus Jonah was in love with his art and really happy with the inspiration that Fairy Tail gave him, and that Erza was new to the guild and didn't appreciate the chaos but liked the lively spirit in there.

"At least it's not boring and they seem happy" Sakura commented. Erza smiled and lift a hand to her eyes, but aborted the movement half-way. "Erza-chan, if you feel anything unusual in your eye, _anything at all_, you have to come and see me. If for some reason I'm not around, visit Porlyusica-san."

The girl smiled contritely "It's just... I think I can see better with my fake eye than with my real one, and I'm starting to feel a little bit dizzy."

"That's... let's go to the infirmary and I'll see." After sitting the girl in a stool and, Sakura used her diagnostic jutsu and made her follow some exercises to determine her vision. "Weird..." she muttered slowly. "The chakra is reacting very differently in you... maybe because you are a mage? There's a mage's natural lack of balance between Physical and Mental energy... but medical chakra _is _a yin release, mental energy, so..."

"Is something wrong?" asked a little anxiously the redhead.

Sakura smiled "Wrong? No. Don't worry, you haven't had an eye for a long time and it might be a little disorientating suddenly recovering the organ and the sight. Not only that, because the pathways that we connected to the optical nerve are all new cells taken from a sample of you right eye your brain might've some problems to catch the sudden extra-information. But you are young, so maybe in a pair of days you will feel fine."

Erza had the face of someone who didn't understand half the explanation but got the gist of it "But... why is it weird?"

"Because your optical nerve is strengthening and attaching itself with the eye. You might be a little more sensitive to ge- _illusions_, or you might develop a resistance to them. It really depends on what the Eternano and Spiritual energy gathering there will do, but it doesn't seem to be malicious."

Did it mean that chakra attracted eternano? Or was it something Erza's own magic was creating? Was it Sakura's own medical jutsu the thing that wreaked havoc in Porlyusica's expected result? Either way, that meant that Sakura couldn't use her Mystical Palm Jutsu carelessly, for it could have strange results when combined with magic.

Her chakra was Yin yang. Yin was mental energy. Yang was physical energy.

Yin release –in other words, using mainly the _mental_ part of her chakra-, was used primarily in healing jutsu and genjutsu. She had compared Yin release to the Spiritual magic that Mages had naturally inside their bodies, and she was positive they were the same.

The physical energy -Yang- inside the Mages was tiny, so tiny that she could barely perceive it. Her physical energy was neatly balanced inside her body, and it naturally mixed with the other to make chakra. A mage's body didn't make the mix naturally: there was no balance of energies inside them so they didn't make _chakra_; they took their magic and found the balance to create strong energy in the eternano. So in a way, they took the physical energy from the world around them and used it as the other ingredient to create a weird type of chakra that made spells.

Or that was her theory– It was still weak at best. She needed to research more. Anyway, she already had something to write down for Porlyusica. Maybe if she used her jutsu in animals and worked her way up to humans again...

Shrugging, she and went back to the party with Erza behind her, just to find herself twitching after five minutes. Chico was there; drunk out of her pretty blonde head and Sakura was the only other girl remotely near her age. So apparently the younger teenager decided that she was the perfect target to talk about 'boys'. And by boys she was talking about the only male their age in the guild: the Lexes boy.

So Chico might've been stalking the guy since he was ten –she being an eight year old. Sakura could proudly say that she totally never did that, although the way in which the girl said it hinted to a more Hinata-esque way to... _observe_ the boy she liked. Still was stalking, but of a more innocent type. Maybe. Hopefully.

She didn't want to drink overmuch. Because her teacher was _Tsunade_, everybody thought that she'd have a liking for liquor or a high tolerance to it; it was all a dirty, dirty lie. She knew the reason for Tsunade's drunkenness and found it tragic, so naturally Sakura didn't want to emulate _that_. Besides, she took her training as a ninja _very_ seriously since she became her apprentice, so she wasn't going to disable herself if she could help it. She was already weak without being drunk to boot.

That didn't mean that Sakura completely avoided liquor, at least not in that welcome party. She was in an unknown territory and the last time she saw her best friend and teacher they were facing a god-like monster; she was still fighting the random bursts of fear that she_ could be trapped in some unbreakable, __**infinite Genjutsu**_ and had the feeling she'd be doing that for a long time; she still had some troubles with the new language, didn't have a place to sleep or a ryo to search for one, and felt useless and alone. So she deserved at least to taste that 'whisky' thing.

But she put the drink down when she saw a boy running along the guild. A very _pissed_ and very _naked _ten year old Sasuke look-alike, screaming something about lost underwear and inciting hysterical laughter from the guild.

"I can't believe it. Am I really havin' hallucinations 'bout a mini-naked-Sasuke?" she slurred, horrified. "I'm not Orochimaru! ...and there's Naruto", she muttered in awe. "At least he's not naked, thank the gods..."

Yeah, there was Naruto, with his arms in his chest and a bored half-scowl, slouching against a wooden column. Well... the age was right, hair and eye color too... but the lines on his face weren't. Moreover she wasn't _that_ out of it, and she knew that Naruto was in the other world, probably worrying sick about her. So that was just... a very mean hallucination!

Well, she wasn't _that_ much sober either.

'_Sakura'_ in her brain, Tsunade's drunken voice suddenly thundered _'When ya start seeing weird things that shouldn't be there... it means that yer smashed. Ya should just drink 'till you pass out and dun worry too much. Ya won't be regainin' your wits for at least quarter a day, anyway.'_

That was _probably_ a shitty advice. But, as testament to her drunkenness, she followed it with a shrug, downing another shot without batting an eyelash.

Four hours later, after losing the majority of her coordination and talking a lot with Chico about 'Lexis' and how following him around qualified as stalking even if he was attractive, Sakura stumbled towards the master and asked him if she could crash in the infirmary that night. When he nodded, absentmindedly warning to his mug of beer that it would need a hospital when he was done with it, she slowly made her way to the place and plopped in one bed with a content sigh, her head pleasantly swimming in a haze, and fell asleep immediately.

**oOo**

'_And this is why I don't like to drink'_ she thought miserably when she woke up in the dirty bed, with an ugly taste in her mouth and a powerful headache.

Thankfully she knew some good jutsus to shoot down hangovers. That was something that she _did_ learn of her teacher about drinking, having had to use them on said blonde on a daily basis –Tsunade apparently couldn't bother herself with doing them when having a hangover– and right there she was damn grateful for it. Still, she needed to at least wash her face before going out in a mission and hopefully scrounge enough to buy some clothes that didn't reek of alcohol.

She walked outside the infirmary, set on finding a bathroom... and found herself face to face with Naruto.

Except this time she wasn't drunk and could easily reason that he was just a stranger look-alike.

"Good morning" she greeted giving one step back. "I'm Sakura Haruno."

"Laxus. Did you _sleep_ in there?" the teenager asked with a frown, probably knowing about the filth and unpleasant smell.

Sakura nodded. So that was Chico's Lexus... Laxus. "I don't have a place yet, so the master allowed me take a bed for this night. One question, what do I have to do to take a mission?"

"Wait until gramps puts the requests in the mission board, grab one and ask him to check it" answered coolly the blond. "Seeing how yesterday he drank like mad, he'd be hanging them around noon."

"Great" she groaned. "But then who's going to open the guild?"

He signaled with a thumb the open doors "I _am_ opening the guild. Are you still drunk or what?"

Sakura chuckled, ashamed. "Right, sorry. I'm still slow... Why are you here opening the guild? Are you the warden?"

"I'm opening because I can, Pink Chick", he glared, obviously insulted.

Sakura, showing her amazing skills to be an understanding person, rapidly tried to apologize for confusing him with the janitor... "I didn't think that the guy who slept with a yellow teddy bear would have clearance to opening the guild, that's all."... Okay, maybe she didn't. Maybe she was still tired and hated the bad rap she got, and she had always been the type to make others suffer for her temper issues.

Hey, at least she wasn't punching people, right?

Laxus scowled _hard_, but a weird flush appeared in his cheeks. He was leaking subconsciously some Killing Intent "_Who_ told you that bullshit!?"

"Please, everyone in Magnolia knows. Yes, even me, and I've only been here for half a day, five hours of which I spent drinking and the rest sleeping it away." That wasn't true, but she wasn't dirty enough to reveal Chico's big mouth.

"Well, you obviously were hallucinating" he said recovering his bearings and his cold tone, although the blush remained.

"You don't have a good poker face, Teddy Boy, and the fact that you asked me first _who_ told me instead of brushing it off as madness is telling" she deadpanned. Then she shook her head and smirked "So it's true and we both know it. Don't worry, I won't tell."

"So I've got a stalker now? Great", he huffed angrily. "Don't go near my house again."

Now _Sakura_ blushed "I'm **not** a stalker! I'm just repeating what they told me about you!"

"I can't believe there's a normal type of conversation where some guy's sleeping habits can just come up!" he retorted crossing his arms.

"No? Try a _drunken_ one. I know so many things about little you that I feel unclean! Only need those 'cute child photos in the Fantasia' they assure they have and I'll be pouring _bleach_ in my _brain_", she said with a grimace.

"So it _was_ the old man" he muttered, so quietly that Sakura wouldn't have heard it if she wasn't a kunoichi. She refrained to ask why he was so quick in pointing to an _old man_ for stalker. She didn't want to know.

"So Laxus-san. Where's the bathroom?" she asked deciding to stop tormenting him.

He pointed to the left and walked away with a murderous face saying something about strangling the old geezer in his bed. She _really_ **didn't** want to know.

After washing her face and short hair in the sink of the ladies bathroom, she marched out trying to decide what she could do. She hadn't any money on her, nor house to come back, there was just an angry Laxus in the guild and she didn't want to go to the streets without anything to do.

So she settled herself with inspecting the guild until master pinned the missions on the board.

There was a kitchen, storage room, and some staircase that guided to a basement... where she found an interesting place; a library. It was enormous, at least compared to the libraries she'd seen in her world, storing a fine thousand books if not more. In the middle of the room there was a wooden table, and a stair to reach the tallest places glistened under the flickering light of the candle.

After skimming from titles as interesting as puzzling, she took one about Fiore. If she was going to do missions, the least she could do was to have a minimal geographic knowledge about its most important cities and whatever she could find.

Fiore was a country that had 700,000 inhabitants; its capital was Crocus and its currency the Jewel. The longest train tracks in the kingdom connected from port Hargeon to Clover Town, the peninsula was surrounded by Bosco and Seven at the north, and...

After some hours of flipping through the parts that talked about the political structure of the kingdom and the place of mages in there (The Magic Council in Era being important to her, because they were the law that could pursue her ass if she was registered as a Mage and screwed up somehow), she heard some noise coming from the first floor and stood up hurriedly, tucking away the book and running up the stairs. She wanted to speak to the master immediately, and if the missions were available it'd be great too.

"Master" she called when she saw the little man, but stopped after inspecting him better. He had a big bump in his head and a black eye "... what... happened?"

"I might've gotten too carried away with the wine yesterday... I might've revealed some embarrassing things about my grandson..." he muttered "I don't remember it, though."

Sakura had a big sweat drop in her head. It wasn't that hard to connect the dots _'So that's the 'old man'. Wow. Laxus is his grandson? But if I ask it, I'd be putting myself in evidence'._

She decided that she didn't want to mess with her Medical Jutsu yet, so she bit her tongue before she offered to cure him. "Yeah, er... can I take a mission, sir? Chico insists that I must stay in Fairy Hills if I want a good apartment, but the rent is over 100,000 J the month, so I need to start making money now."

"Sure, pick whatever you like and bring it" he said sullenly.

Sakura walked to the mission board and scanned it eagerly. There were a lot of missions there of all types – asking for fortune reads, find lost things, clean a castle, catch some bandits... it was less organized than the missions from her home, but the similarities were there. Her eyes rested in one that had 300,000 jewels for reward.

"Heal my wife" she muttered, slowly. "It doesn't say from what. Could it be some magical disease? Well, obviously, or they wouldn't be asking for mages." Sakura took the paper. It was perfect for a medic even if she couldn't use freely her jutsu, and if it wasn't something she could manage there was always the option to ask Porlyusica for advice.

She took the paper to Makarov, who skimmed it over before nodding "A perfect mission for you. It's been there for three months, you know? There you have it, good luck"

He returned the paper to her, and she took it with a pensive look. "Thanks master."

"Are you sure that you want to go alone? You can ask whoever you like to go with you. It's normal in Fairy Tail to go in teams to reduce the possibility of accidents, or just to help the newbies to get used to the way of the guild of doing things."

Sakura mulled over it for a second. On the one hand, the mission sounded _off_ and she might like some backup. On the other hand, she was plain _tired_ of always having to do everything with other people guarding her so she didn't screw up, ultimately getting in their way and making a nuisance of herself. "I am a kunoichi and know of the risks of a mission, and the standard procedure to them. Furthermore, I know to look always underneath the underneath. I won't be taken off guard."

"Then off you go and take care", acknowledged the master with a grin. Makarov apparently wasn't going to bother someone with an air so professional about their missions.

"Of course, sir."

She walked leisurely, storing all in her head the information she could take from the sheet. Apparently she had to go to Kunugi Station and meet somebody there. Well, at least she knew that Kunugi was one of the six stations of that famous train that connected Hargeon to Clover Town. Which begged for the question... how was she supposed to take a train without Jewels?

Sakura sighed, knowing her answer. In the ninja world, the most frequent way to move from place to place was _walking_. Sometimes, rare times at that, they'd take boats or horse carriages, but those were always reserved for rich people and very few had the privilege to use them. Hell, the _only_ time in her life she'd seen a train was in the Land of Snow. Thus, she wasn't a stranger to cross a country –sometimes several of them– walking, she could survive in the wilderness just fine, and she had a good speed on her legs. On the other side, she didn't have clothes or utilities, just her old kunai pouch and the medicines Porlyusica gave her –it'd be a good idea to take them to the mission, just in case the disease wasn't something she could fix with local herbs.

Oh, well. She'd survive. She'd also take at least three days to reach Kunugi. But alas, that was the life of a ninja. Specially of a broke one...

"Good luck in your first job, Sakura-chan!" "Yeah, be careful! Try to come back before New Year!"

With wide eyes and a surprised mouth opening without uttering a sound, she turned to the people that were wishing her good luck. Macao and Wakaba, lazing in the back of the guild and _already_ with drinks in their hands, had big smiles in their faces and were waving at her

"Ah—yeah! Thank you very much", she said with a slight bow. "I'll be leaving!"

And Sakura walked out of the guild, her duffle bag in her back and a startled expression in her face. She didn't even know them that much, why would they care about some mission she took? _'Then again, they're both perverts, so who knows what intentions they had... no, it'd do no good if I start being all negative about it. They were just good guys and we might've bonded with alcohol last night.'_

She'd talked a lot to Wakaba... _Wakaba_ talked a lot _to her_. And Fairy Tail seemed to be a really friendly place: the people there was less frigid than half the ninjas she knew –or maybe she was better at deciphering expressions that they were at hiding them.

She firmly squashed any thoughts about her home, teachers and best friends, and ran to the train tracks she'd seen yesterday.

* * *

**Authoress's note:** Sakura arrived to Earth Land in September of X776, and entered Fairy Tail in December of that same year, as a _sixteen_ year old. Laxus is fifteen, Cana and Gray joined a pair of years ago, Erza joined two months ago, Chico C Hammin is the daughter of the propietary of Fairy Hills and has like thirteen, fourteen tops (and is _not_ an OC).

So that's it. Apart of the old generation (Wakaba, Macao, Reedus), the others have yet to join the guild.

Also, Laxus is not a complete jerk _**yet**_, so don't get surprised because he didn't arrive shooting lightning out of his butt to scare people (Wow. _Really_ awkward mental image right there), he's a moody teenager, but still has enough of his 'cute child' days to be around the guild. (I'm basing this in his attitude of 'Natsu and the Dragon Egg' anime chapter).

I feel like nothing happened in this chapter. Except some covert foreshadowing, a little general explanation about Fairy Tail and Sakura's mindset, a detail about Spiritual and Yin energy that I don't believe anyone understood, and some random teddy bear issue that refused to be erased. Also, of course, I'm establishing Sakura as a resourceful girl that's developing a strong pet peeve about a_lways being fucking __**useless**_.

**-Rant about Sakura in cannon! Skip if you don't want to read me raging to the heavens!**

Come on! _Every time_ she does something cool, some shit happens that forces Naruto or Kakashi to go and save her hide! She can't even _punch the ever-living shit out of Neji_ (which is awesome, and I don't care if he wasn't the original) without _making it lame_ having to be saved by Naruto seconds after!

It's like: "yeah, she got better- But at the end of the day, someone always has to save her. 'Cuz you know, no matter her skills or resolve the UNIVERSE demands Sakura to be unable to go and do awesome shit on her own without looking like a retarded fangirl saved by the guy she nastily rejected when she was twelve. Never mind the supposed character development!"

I got it. She was _**obnoxious**_ at twelve. So were Naruto and Sasuke, in their own ways. Naruto grew up in the time skip. Sasuke is getting some fucking serious development as for now, and has being doing awesome between all the angst and stupid life decisions.

Sakura... didn't, isn't and apparently won't ever stop being helpless –even when she looks competent. Why don't you just give up and live in a farm for the rest of your life, lassie? Granted, Naruto might need to come and save you anyway, because you know you're dumber than a fucking _beheaded_ _chicken_ in those key moments where you should use your guts and intelligence. And if you manage to be strong... the universe will send a platoon of undefeatable zombies to crap on you party.

Sorry girl. God doesn't like you.

I was analyzing Sakura's personality and abilities, to accommodate them in my fic and think on ways to develop them. I _had_ to rant about it. I don't even know where to begin anymore *shakes head*.

**-Rant finished**

A little question: do you see why this 'new mission' sounded weird? I think is pretty simple, but a friend of mine wouldn't catch it until I explained it.

Thanks for following/favoriting my ass off, and all the reviews are highly appreciated too! You guys are awesome, and you probably know that.

I'm in lazy mode after writting too much, so I will answer reviews... later.


	4. Chapter Three

**Naruto** is owned by Masashi Kishimoto.** Fairy Tail** is owned by Hiro Mashima.

**.:.**

_**Chapter Three**_

_Not a Complete Coincidence_

**·:·**

Sakura surprised herself with how fast she could move between the trees while following the train tracks. Even though she could never reach the speed of the train, her chakra augmented legs pulled her through the forest almost as if she was running on soldier pills.

She had just eaten some peaches, so where did that sudden hype come from?

Her mind provided her with the memory about eternano and how 'it was in every living thing'. Peaches were as living as any organic thing could be. So... Had she just _eaten_ Eternano? Can you eat magic? Or, well, a component of magic? And from a peach, of all the mundane things...

But then, she'd been eating local food since her arrival so she should've felt the rush of power since day one. Hum... actually she was healing from _fatal_ injuries and practically dodged death by a ton of luck, so all her energy probably went to repair her wrecked body. That might explain how she managed to survive after being completely and literally crushed.

And it was the first time she just went and took some peaches from a tree (she was hungry and bankrupt, and couldn't just drop by Porlyusica's and ask her for some more of that wonderful soup). Eternano was in nature. What better natural entity could she find than a just-harvested fruit?

"I _really_ hope nothing bad happens to me" she mumbled, worried. She wasn't a statue yet, so she decided to continue the mission... and eat only processed food from then on.

Just in case.

Running alone wasn't as fun for her as it might be for other ninjas. She had more important things in mind than spend a day in the wilderness, like urgent experiments to do about what eternano could do to her—and what her chakra could do to mages— searching for a place, going to buy some clothes and do extensive research around the city to see with her own eyes how that 'new world' worked. But to do that she needed money, and to get money she needed to complete the mission.

A full moon was already illuminating the sky when she arrived to Kunugi station. It was less complex than the one in Magnolia, actually looking like a rundown little house and some old platform. She brushed her hair with her fingers again and looked around trying to identify what would be next: the guild should've sent the message of her accepting the mission, but it would be impossible to tell the client exactly _when_ she was going to arrive; she couldn't take the train for her own lack of funds and nobody knew that, so she might even be _late_. Worst case scenario, they would discount it from her paycheck.

"You must be the Fairy" said a woman, standing up from a nearby wooden chair. She was dressed in some black dress with lots of frilly ends, her copper hair flowing freely in small twisted curls that Sakura had never seen in a head before. "Master is waiting for you."

"Master?" asked Sakura.

But the woman didn't respond, and she was guided quickly across a barely visible road crossing the forest.

One hour. Two hours. Absolute silence. Water flowing. A tweak in her senses?

'_Is she trying to put a genjutsu on me?' _she mused, finding that the answer was yes. She had some serious talent to identify the signs of being trapped in an illusion, and she'd been walking for more than two hours without realizing that she was in one.

But Sakura wasn't going to call anyone on that, yet, so she dispelled subtly the illusion with her own chakra. She had already confirmed that this wasn't going to be a normal mission, and instead of feeling worried she felt her expectations grow: it was going to be a challenge and she prayed for a hard one to put all her energy on it and forget for a second the madness around (or inside) her.

The long walk resulted to be actually _longer_ and her steps _faster_ than she originally thought. She'd perceived time and her own strain running through the forest wrongly, even in high alert, and that was damn worrying... Just in what kind of moronic trap did she fall this time?

She sighed. Problems were what she went searching for, and problems were what she found. Wonderful.

Three hours later, she was ready to _beg_ for someone to cast the damn genjutsu on her again-the silence from that woman was creepy as hell, and she was starting to have some serious regrets about her idiotic decision.

They reached a beautiful fence glistening under the sun, covered with green Ivy and giving an air of class and absolute unfamiliarity to Sakura. Even something as normal as a fence... the design, exquisite gothic lines, the very type of metal... it was a completely foreign concept to Sakura. She'd been taking on Magnolia's sights, but just standing in front of an almost three meter high forge of steel was enough to make her feel so out of place...

"Where... are we?"

"In the manor of Mauvais" informed swiftly the woman, inspecting her legs stoically. Sakura felt a little bit nervous and questioned her with a look that she shrugged off "You have the gait of a high lady. Are you of noble lineage?"

"No. I'm a normal village girl."

"I see... might I ask from which kingdom do you came from?"

Sakura plastered a polite smile on her face "I came from the woods. Don't worry; I'm a registered mage from Fairy Tail." She wasn't one yet, but the client didn't have to know that "My name is Haruno Sakura."

"My name is Eloise. I am a servant of the noble house of Mauvais", she curtsied elegantly with her dress, successfully making Sakura feel uncomfortable with her badly matched clothes and mud-soaked combat boots. So the woman was a servant... The black dress was the most stylish thing Sakura had ever seen! Then again, what did she know about Earth Land's fashion trends?

Eloise murmured something and the entire fence fell as if being eaten by the ground, revealing worn out stone steps. Summer Camellias bloomed proudly at both sides, the white blossoms littering the ground and filling the place with brightness. At the sides of the stairway grew distinct types of flowers like color candles flickering under the shades of the trees.

And up there, was a beautiful Japanese garden. Just what was the concept of that manor?

A saccharine voice thundered across a blue pond where some koi fishes swam in circles, and suddenly appeared a white clothed male at her side, dressed in some kind of white suit and playing with a black cane. His black void eyes scanned absently around them, but focused on her promptly and a flickering of... _something_ flared in their depths.

"Welcome, welcome! I'm most pleased to welcome you to this humble abode! I am the count Michelangelo Mauvais, lord of this manor." He bowed grandiosely, as if he was a player in some theatre.

No matter how she looked at him, that was a damn suspicious character! Still, Sakura bowed formally like she was taught to do in her country, not wanting to shame herself further than her now perceived-as-ragged appearance was doing already "Haruno Sakura, Fairy Tail mage."

"Such a lovely fairy in this lonely garden" he breathed, twirling around her and inspecting her closely. "You might be what I was looking for. Eloise, dear, take this beauty to her quarters, and give her anything she needs, asks or desires. It's almost tea time, so we'll talk about our request with a good drink and some biscuits, ja?"

And, without further ado, he spun on his heel and headed to his house. Sakura was feeling honestly freaked out: it was like hearing Lee sprouting poetic nonsense, but without the spandex and exaggerated eyebrows and with a repulsive air of falseness, lies and bad intentions lingering on his every word.

The maid took her out of her trance "Please follow me, milady."

"Where are we going?" she asked, marching behind the servant.

"Tea ceremonies are sacred for milord, milady" Sakura didn't like how she was given a title, and less when it was one to match that odd individual. "You will be provided with a bath and fresh clothes to assist the ceremony, and anything you need, ask or desire."

* * *

When she was a little girl, she dreamed with using a beautiful dress, being served in a castle and meeting a lord. Or something on those lines. It was a testament on how life got a little too gritty and her vision of life a lot more cynical, that she barely remembered how those childish daydreams exactly went on: she had crushed without mercy those silly scenarios the moment Sasuke almost killed her for the first time, feeling utterly inadequate with her perceived uselessness and lack of real-world knowledge.

Anyway, her dusty childhood daydreams provided her with enough knowledge to know that this was a performance worth of any fairy tale. The dress she was using was simply the most exquisite piece of art she had ever seen in her life, a forest green with some lighter shades in the cuffs and hems, embroidered with golden threads in complicated patterns. Her hair was fixed by Eloise in an elaborated bun that left some bangs falling gracefully on her sides, and she had even being persuaded on using some eyeliner and light lipstick.

The only reason she had allowed that was because she perceived it as a part of the mission; to please the client and uphold the honor of the village- the guild. Her borrowed old clothes were inside the duffel bag that was hidden under the many layers of the long and voluptuous skirt that fluttered around her. She was ready to tear the dress apart in case she needed to fight; there was something definitely wrong with the mission and her movements were being hampered with the elaborate and impractical get-up.

An hour after her arrival, she was sitting in a... library. She couldn't understand why she needed to dress as a queen to sit in _there_ and drink a cup of tea. Then again, she couldn't understand how a library managed to look so obscenely overcompensating either; there were metallic armors like the ones she had never seen occupying every corner like silent guards, elaborate tapestries and paintings and drapes... she shook her head. It was just_ too much _flashy things.

Instead she noticed, slightly alarmed, the _many_ weapons hidden under all those ornaments: hanging from walls, in special pedestals, over the chimney crossed one another, in the hands of the aforementioned armors, in the legs of the table, even the nails that kept some tapestries on place were as deadly as any kunai. It was an effective way to conceal the offensive quantity of weapons in such extravagant place without bringing too much attention to them... 'Decorative weapon' was something that she had rarely seen, because in the ninja world everything was a damn weapon, ones better concealed than others. Anyway, not even the gaudy jewels or impractical handles could hide the glinting _sharp_ edges. Those weapons were no joke.

"You look breathtaking, lady Sakura" congratulated the Lord behind her.

"Sakura, just Sakura is fine."

"You will allow me such familiarity? I am honored!" he took a seat in front of her, on a very stuffed chair. Eloise arrived with a chart of tea, silently serving them an elaborate concoction. Sakura wasn't going to take a sip of something with so many unknown herbs, no mattering the fact that it was being brewed in front of her. But Faust was talking again, and she softened her suspicious glances as much as she could "The request for the mages was to heal my wife. Before letting you see her, I must make sure that you can heal her."

"Before assuring you that I can heal her, I must inspect her status" she retorted calmly. "I can't cure the unknown."

The man let out a mirthless laugh "Well, if you answer one question I will be sure. Tell me, can you heal a snapped column, almost crushed legs, third degree flames, a gap in a stomach and a deep stab wound in the lungs of someone with a foot on death's doors?"

She did a double take at that, and raised an incredulous eyebrow. "If your wife had such injuries, she wouldn't have survived three minutes, let alone months."

"She's in a stasis spell" he dismissed coolly. "With those wounds and more... the moment I lift the spell she will die, unless she's treated immediately. No doctor would take such mission, and the ones who wanted a try didn't pass the criteria."

"Criteria?"

"Yes... they had to heal someone before putting a finger on my wife" his void irises bore into her, and she suddenly knew- "... They had to heal themselves."

A flash of light was the only warning that something went wrong. Her dress...?

She looked, wide eyed and flabbergasted, to the thin forest-green spears impaled in her abdomen and chest, and even legs. Blood slowly permeated the clothes... "Wha-" a wet crimson cough interrupter her, because in that moment the spears retreated from her body and snapped back into the infernal thing, as if the soft silks had suddenly mutated to solid spears and then back again.

"Those didn't touch any vital organ, but the blood loss will kill you within two minutes at best" he continued, uninterruptedly sipping his tea. Eloise turned the chart, lifted a cloth, and revealed an ample myriad of medical utensils, her face as unassuming as ever. "That special dress has killed at least twelve hopefuls. Of course, the suit for the gentlemen has claimed nearly forty lives..."

Seconds, minutes passed by without any movement. Michelangelo sighed, muttering about another false leading, and stood up. His walk to the door was interrupted by a feminine, energetic voice.

"You monster..." her spiteful and wheezing remark echoed in the silence.

Sakura was still sitting motionless on the chair. There were green dim lights peeking in the center of every bloodstain in her chest and stomach. Her eyes were narrowed and her mouth set in a grim line, but she didn't have the expression of someone dying.

Privately, Sakura was torn between punching herself for being absolutely taken out of guard by a freaking dress, and healing the most pressing wounds. While she could heal little scratches on herself without using mystical palm, the number of deep stabs was terrifying and her concentration couldn't help her heal everything at once. There wasn't any vital organ damaged indeed, and she was momentarily thankful on that, but... healing the ten lethal _holes_ on her body at the same time was taxing on her chakra and almost impossible to do without all her brainpower concentrating the healing techniques on the most pressing wounds.

Michelangelo returned to his seat, his face as void of real emotion as it could get, while an artificial smile even creepier than Sai's first attempts peeked on the corners of his lips. "I see. My... _wife_", he said the word with the barest hint of resistance "will be most pleased."

"Really?" she panted, taking the momentary stillness in the situation to hurriedly close a dangerous cut in her tights that would kill her if left unattended, but looking straight to his eyes through her pink eyelashes. "Do you _honestly_ think you will survive when I'm done here?"

"I can impale you again" offered the man. "And you can't take it off... the second your hand so much as _touches_ the dress, it will react again." Then he looked curiously at her hunched position and sweaty forehead "You seem to be having a little trouble right there."

The young medic gritted her teeth again and sneered at the man "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to heal this person, and I'm told that the Hippocratic Oath wouldn't allow you to just walk away."

"You plan to kill me when I'm done with her" stated Sakura, feeling a wave of tiredness hit her head but pushing to heal herself completely. Her mind came to a halt and an idea formed in there. "I'll need to rest before I'm ready to heal someone in the border of death... I wasted too much energy healing myself."

"By all means, do it" said magnanimously the man. "Eloise will take you to the room where my wife is resting and put a blanket in the floor."

The maid did just as he said. After five more minutes, Sakura stood up and sent a scorching glare to the man before exiting the library.

* * *

She wished she had her teacher's Rebirth Seal. Damn, she was going to do one for herself if she managed to get herself out of that mess! As it was, she had just sealed the wounds and reattached the sliced arteries and veins before falling into a fitful half-vigilance. Eloise was there, doing a faithful impression of a creepy doll observing her every move from a corner of the room.

Just recovering a little of chakra would be enough to punch the wall and get the hell out of there—there was still the problem with the dress, but she was confident in her plan to rip it before it killed her, but she would need to recover more chakra (and to be alone).

After three hours, she could feel herself less light headed, and realized that Eloise had given her some food that she eyed distrustfully.

"It's not poisoned" commented calmly the woman, reading her cold glance correctly. "You might be able to heal milord's wife, and are of no use if you are dead."

"My... healing magic requires me to be on a perfect lucid concentration, to attach every tissue and muscle together" Sakura informed stiffly. "I wouldn't put it past you to drug the thing to keep me here."

Eloise blinked "You cannot run away. You are inside an instantaneous and portable Iron Maiden, and have lost a lot of blood. Besides, outside of this room are special runes that forbid the use of magic by everyone but milord. And I am a capable fighter. There is no need to drug the savior of milord's wife."

Sakura was going to comment about the ungratefulness of almost killing her, but bit her cheek and took a reluctant bite of the roasted beef, subtly making a cursory recognizance of the room.

It was a bare place, so different to the other ones in the house. There was nothing but the tea chart with a lot of medical utensils and a magnificent bed; four posters of mahogany peered under green velvet curtains. There was something with Michelangelo and green, she noted absently.

"You say that she is in a stasis spell... can you elaborate?"

"Yes. Milord is a very accomplished mage, and modified the traditional Body Restriction Magic and Petrification Magic to freeze completely the body of a person, but with no lasting effects when the spell is lifted and keeping the target unconscious the whole time."

Body restriction was pretty self-explanatory, but the other... "What is Petrification Magic?"

"It turns the body to stone and, if it's not tended immediately, to dust."

"I... see..."

Another two hours of uncomfortable silence passed, until Sakura finally felt her energy replenished; it was the good side of having little chakra reserves and being apparently so sensitive to the energy in the food. She entertained the idea of running away just there, but the professional part in her wanted to see that 'stasis spell'. If she could find a way to replicate it... the possibilities were astounding.

"I'll bring milord to lift the spell" announced Eloise, bowing and walking to the door.

"Wait! First I have to make a scan- I don't want to be surprised by the wounds..."

"Understood" The maid sat back in the corner and looked at her without blinking. Sakura lifted an eyebrow. That was a perfect impersonation of an ANBU from Ne.

Nothing, not even her mad situation, could have readied her for the sight that met her eyes when Sakura moved the curtains and lifted the sheets. She felt her blood run cold and her mind halt for maybe ten seconds before she swiftly cursed thrice under her breath.

Her new 'patient' was the one and only Uchiha Obito.

Now she understood what was iffy about the mission... when that man was involved, things tended to get _really_ bizarre. For all his straightforward objectives, the traitor was a really mysterious individual: his motives didn't make any sense and his reasoning was convoluted and baffling, to put it mildly.

And his unpredictability was shining. How had he managed to be saved by a mage? How had he convinced the guy that he was his freaking _wife_? No, wait, how was he even considered to be alive? What were the odds of him being found when he was _seconds_ away of a certain death by a man who could put that 'stasis spell' on him.

It also raised some questions about her situation. What were the odds of her being found by maybe the only woman who could fix her almost dead body? It started to seem like less of a coincidence and more of a crazy plot. And she hated crazy plots.

Just what the hell happened? At that question, all thoughts about escaping after examining the stasis spell flew out of her head. This was a golden oportunity to know more... which she recognized as another uncomfortable coincidence.

"He'll make a superb pet."

She whirled around, carefully keeping her hands away from her body. Michelangelo was now smoking a big pipe, hollowly smirking at her from the door.

"He fell from the skies, just over my invocation circle. You might not believe it, but I think he comes from another dimension" a spark of euphoria shone in his eyes. "Just as I did."

"Another dimension? Ridículous" by his comment, he might not know that she herself was from another dimension too, and she would like to keep that info to herself. "It's impossible."

"Ah, but that's where you are wrong. I come from a place called Edolas" Sakura fought bravely to keep her face increasingly confused, but her head was already making connections. Two persons from that Edolas, two from her world... there was a strong link, indeed. Michelangelo continued calmly "There, I was a sorcerer, an alchemist and a summoner. I tried to use the Lower Key of Solomon the Mage, along a very rare artifact to invoke a demon... the artifact-" he crossed the room with three strides and pointed to Uchiha Obito's still face. "Was rumored to be an eyeball from a real demon. The eye of Samsara. And it worked."

Sakura paled. Yes, of course. Not only a dimensional jutsu from the Eternal Mangekyou- Uchiha Obito had the Rinnegan too! How could she have forgotten that? The legendary dojutsu... it was an unknown variable that could've messed the time-space jutsu from the Sharingan.

Michelangelo was getting euphoric "I found myself in a different world! I couldn't believe it!" his gait got faster and he started gesturing with both hands as if he was bracing himself to swim in a rough sea "So much magic around, so much energy, so much possibilities! But I lost the eye! I lost it to some stupid kid with a tatoo on his face! So shameful! So pitiful! I wanted to hang myself from shame! THE SHAME!"

Sakura took a step back. He was losing his marbles-or the mask that made him look as though he had some sanity to begin with- and pulling his own hair. He even went in front of Eloise and started slapping her rhythmically.

"WHY -*Slap* -DID- *Slap* -I- *Slap* -TRUSTED- *Slap* -HIIIM?! EEEHH?!" The woman didn't even react. Abruptly, _violently,_ he calmed himself, and took a puff from his pipe. "But then! Then I found the eye!" he was jubilous again, almost squealing. Sakura was absolutely weirded out. "In this creature with the appearance of a man. The eye of Samsara! I could recover my eye! BUT" he jumped and pointed at the kunoichi with his middle finger. "Then I thought: why would I want to kill such exotic summon to steal his eye? I'm an expert in obedience rituals and runes, Eloise here is one low-class demon absolutely devoted to me. So I decided to try and save him, make a ritual in the process so I would get, instead of a dead eye, the demon who possessed it biding to my every whim! Imagine the possibilities!" Michelangelo threw the pipe to the wall. "But no type of healing magic works! He has an incompatible energy with this world, you see! And then!" he cut himself, with a fed up expression. "Eloise, you explain the rest. I'm getting tired of it."

"Yes. Then one mage with divination skills came to master" she continued the explanation, her unexpresive voice contrasting with his earlier crazed shouting. "And told him that there would be a mage that would be able to heal the dimensional traveler. Master started searching by himself, but when the search for such healer started to get cold, he put a request to the council, disguising the part about the stranger with a tale about a sick wife."

"And nobody ever thought of asking why almost _fifty three_ goddamn mages just _vanished_ when taking this request?" Sakura asked dumbfounded.

"Why, yes" Michelangelo piped in, busying himself with trying to fix his pipe. "But I have some friend in the Council that keeps them away, erases their records and takes care of the witnesses or uncomfortable questions. As long as he has his money, he couldn't care less if I had a bakery and just wanted the mages to bake some cakes. If he knew about my little pets though... well, doesn't matter. He won't find out."

Sakura shook her head. Of all the crazy bastards she'd met in all her life, this Michelangelo dude was probably in a solid second place in her list of 'Insane beyond all frontiers' (Madara and his plan would_ forever _be on top.)

"But doesn't matter, really. Now you are going to heal him. We'll begin with the legs, and work our way up from there" he explained genuinely excited. "Now, about the stasis spell: the countermeasure will have a slow effect, so you'll have time to heal him carefully when he starts bleeding again. Let him die and I'll use your soul to feed Eloise."

Sakura directed at him the most unimpressed glare she could muster, but quietly walked to the Uchiha's side and took a look at him.

Maybe, more than his wounds, the thing that would decide if he died or lived was going to be his chakra. If he used his last to pull that stunt with the Kamui -and she felt a pang of guilt and thankfulness that was crudely shoved off her head- then it wouldn't matter if she healed him perfectly, he'd kick the bucket.

It started. Michelangelo said something about some demons and whatnots, and his voice acquired a terrible timber that sent shudders down her spine. She saw how Uchiha Obito's toes recovered the color of a human skin, and how it traveled up.

She could leave the fractured legs for later, but she closed the gaping wounds that would mean more blood loss and possible death. The color was going up slowly but at a steady pace, and after five minutes it reached his belly.

She got to work with a pessimistic outlook; his gut was _totalled_. Naruto hadn't been gentle with his rasengan, and the man's intestines were twisted and compressed in a spiraling circle. The worse part was that his tissue was almost made a pulp by the chakra ball. The better part was that Naruto didn't use a wind variation of his attack on there, or the sheer amount of cellular destruction would make him absolutely impossible to fix.

She huffed and decided to use Porlyusica's and her experimental method of regeneration. What bad could it do? It wasn't like that bastard was a mage and would have a secondary effect from getting it.

There wasn't any more time to meditate about that. Half his stomach was already functioning and bleeding all over the place, so she roughly tied her hair in a bun behind her head and started stitching and realizing the procedure to his mushy insides.

Her chakra was bleeding out at an alarming rate, but she dared not to stop. And so, the fight to save the life of the most irrepentant bastard in her world began.

She wouldn't be saving him if she wasn't feeling indebted to him... besides, he shouldn't be that evil if he saved her, right? On the other hand, she didn't want to know.

Maybe it had been just ten minutes, but she was on the brink of exhaustion. Bad, very bad. She had been carefully reserving her chakra to allow herself a mad dash on the forest and to punch three or four walls out of her way, but if it continued like this...

Suddenly, his skin started attaching by itself. She looked, flabbergasted, to the sudden high speed regeneration that maybe even Naruto's Kyuubi-induced one would find hard to match. Sakura only had to coax his chakra pathways with her own energy, and that only because he was effectively devoid of chakra.

Even so, the process was disgusting and terrifying. Flesh, a white substance, some convoluted mass of tissue and fluids-it all bubbled and pulsated and slowly shaped itself in the form of a human.

Disgusting. She cringed and felt her stomach revolve at the sight...God, that had to hurt! that was antinatural! oh, god, what was she seeing? How did it happen? _'What in kami's name did this man do to himself?'_

His neck was being unfrozen, but there wasn't anymore risk to let him be. If he had that regeneration thing going on from the begining, it was a testament to the Rasengan terrifying power that it had managed to beat him to an inch of his life.

Suddenly, she caught from the corner of her eye a chance. Michelangelo looked positively fascinated by the spectacle, and even Eloise looked at the thorn mass of self-repairing flesh intently, if blankly.

'_He said touching the dress would trigger it' _she thought. _'Chakra scalpels, is it.'_

It wasn't smart to follow the comments of the enemy in a situation so delicate, but she honestly didn't have a better plan... She threw on herself a mild genjutsu to make it look as though she was enraptured on the Uchiha's monstrous body, and carefully focused on her chakra scalpels, elongating the reach as much as she could (a centimeter) to rip the clothes. Both sides of the thing were already cut, and with surgical precision she cut along the shoulders, chest and long skirt at all the angles she could manage.

Uchiha Obito's nose was recovering the human color when a feminine warcry startled both the master and the servant of the mansion...

...And Michelangelo was suddenly hanging five feet from the ground like a ragdoll, his mouth filled with the taste of copper and bitter stomach fluids. Ribs-internal organs-vertebral column... all was pierced by a slender, doll-like arm.

The pink haired medic looked at him with wide eyes full of shock, not having expected to go through his stomach with her punch. It wasn't supposed to happen like that! Her punch just would knock him out violently! What in the world had happened?!

Then she realized what had happened, horrified. She had been _just_ thinking about feeling like she was in soldier pills! About eating eternano, and what could it do to her chakra! But she had been healing Uchiha Obito and nothing out of the ordinary happened... Although he was so wrecked and she so weary that it was possible she didn't register anything odd with her healing or chakra in general. It didn't feel any different.

But it DID cause some unexpected results. Definitely, _certainly_ she hadn't been thinking on impaling the guy with her own arm...

Maybe that's why That Man was having such a violent regeneration?

She would thank her forged under Tsunade's training reflexes latter for saving her ass from Eloise's mad charge. She wasn't even out of her terrified musings when a clawed hand zipped where her head had been, but her body swiftly moved out of the way by its own.

"Master" she called, and even then her inflection was non-existent.

"E-Elo-i-"

There wasn't any fanfare. He just died, somehow quietly... totally unfitting for such loud man. Not an extra word, or any mad grimace—just a pair of dull eyes and a last gurgle of the concoction of bile and blood mixed in his mouth. But that was death for the human kind; indiscriminate and seemingly random, hardly mindful of the being it was taking away to the next world.

It was the first time Sakura committed an _unintentional_ murder.

The maid walked to him and closed his eyes with an impassive motion. Then she recited something "When the caster dies, the contract shal be finished. Master is dead. I shall return to my dimension."

"Wait! How could you do it?" she asked.

The servant blinked at her, but answered all the same "Edolas is a parallel dimension from Earthland, but there are countless of smaller dimensions running connected to this world... some of the size of a house, others of the size of a country. The biggest and most famous is the home of the Celestial Spirits... it, along Edolas and Earthland, makes the Great Triad that reigns the reality. Then, there are other five dimensions, and my birthplace is in one of them-commonly referred as Hell."

Sakura looked blankly at the maid. So maybe, hoppefully... "Do you know about the things that are inside all the dimensions?"

"I have been present in just three: Edolas, Earthland and Hell."

"Have you heard about the Elemental Countries? The Rokudo Sannin?"

She figured that, if she was talking about things as different dimensions and whatnots, mentioning the closest being she knew of that could be in a different level of humanity would do the trick.

But Eloise shook her head. "I have never heard of those terms. The library of hell could have information, but for that you should pay a hefty price."

"A... price?"

"Your eternal service to the King of Hell and his seventy-two pillars, in exchange for the knowledge. Although you could summon the Great Lord Belphegor and make a deal with him... he may forgive your soul in exchange of something else" then Eloise gave a fake-smile. "I am giving you this knowledge as payment for the freedom you have given me back. Demons are very mindful of contracts, after all, even if we aren't as... _righteous_ as other summons."

With that, a red magic circle appeared under her feet and enveloped her in black shadows. Eloise sent a last half-sneer to Michelangelo's corpse before simply disappearing, just as Uchiha Obito used to do. Sakura stood there, open mouthed and baffled, fixing in her head the info and trying to find a way to use it... without knowledge of any type about summons or magics.

But a male voice reminded her that her situation barely had gotten any better with her riddance of Michelangelo and his maid.

"So... I'm alive? I have a really twisted good luck, indeed..."

* * *

**Authoress's note:** There were some warnings about me bashing Sakura in a Sakura-centric fic last chapter. I get, that you go inside a fic about certain character because you like him/her. Still, I wasn't so much bashing as ranting.

Sakura is a good character, just needs a little push in the development part. But anytime she _might_ do something awesome or at least not-useless, _the world_ blocks her chances with something, like her own silliness, her oversight, her giving up on something... a platoon of freaking Zombies. Etc. Etc. It sucks so bad for her I even feel sorry.

So I was more raging against Kishimoto and his unavoidable stomping over the poor _female_ _lead_ in the show. Guess that's what we get when somebody is the personification of "human weakness"; even if she IS strong and should be goddamn victorious in the big things too, she _somehow_ managed to not be able to stand for herself... by divine grace if necessary. It's like a running gag, but I find it more annoying than funny.

So you see: It wasn't an anti-Sakura rant. It was a PRO-Sakura rant. Don't misunderstand me!

I tend to get called a snarky Tsundere _a lot_ IRL XD

The past chapters got some corrections —my English is horrible, but I got better this last half year (I think), so I cleaned some of the most glaring mistakes.

As a side note: I lost the majority of my fics to a damn virus. All I had written for this- 40 goddamn K (**40,000 words**) was fucked, along with the **approx.** **100.000 fucking words** of my KHR fic that I hadn't checked or uploaded (In Spanish, my fics are more polished, if I may say, and I put a lot more flourish in the wording), a short Fullmetal crack fic, and my three year old 'plot bunny document' with around 100 pages with ideas and short rants that inspired me when I was stuck.

That happened in **October** of the **LAST** **YEAR**. And you know what? My muse was kicked in the balls (yeah, my muse is male). I have been translating some cool fic sporadically, but creatively speaking I was dry and just sent to hell my projects. But, apparently, I'm back. And I'm using freaking Google Drive to save my every document from now on.

Google drive, Banzai!


	5. Chapter Four

**Naruto** is owned by Masashi Kishimoto.** Fairy Tail** is owned by Hiro Mashima.

**.:.**

_**Chapter Four  
**_

_Senseless Monkey Business  
_

**·:·**

Sakura would've face palmed if the situation wasn't so dire. But seeing how Uchiha _Freaking_ Obito was incorporating slowly as if he had the best night's sleep in his life, she couldn't do anything but observe him like a hawk and get ready to fight for her life.

He seemed to notice her presence and cocked his head bemusedly, letting his dark hair cover his eyes.

"Is this some kind of bizarre dream?" he asked. His tone was so _normal_ that she gaped: was he really the same man that was having a gargantuan mental breakdown two months ago? "Where are we?"

The kunoichi decided to keep the words flowing while she tried to make sense of the new development "I've been asking myself that for the past two months. I don't know what you or your dojutsus did, but we seem to be trapped in a kind of alternate dimension."

"We are, really? That's so cool!" he sounded like a curious child –Like 'Tobi' did before revealing himself as the evilest madman in Konoha after Madara. "And you've been healing me for two months? You are soo cool, Sakura-chan!" he gushed loudly. "Better than Tsunade! Better than Chiyo! Better than Zetsu! Better than Kakuzu!"

Somehow, the baffling effect of his acting like a moron was lessened by his deformed face and cold, bright-less eyes. Sakura frowned and said the first thing that came to her head "Don't speak to me so familiarly, Uchiha-san."

"Guess it's not the same without the mask, right?" he inquired, less euphorically but not hostilely or seriously enough to be threatening. "What happened, Sakura-sensei?"

Again, she was thrown in a loop. He sounded like an amalgam of Kakashi's lackadaisical attitude with a faint trace of Naruto's natural bounciness, perfectly pulled together to make her break in a cold sweat. There was something inherently terrifying in _just knowing_ that the affable man could go to a shrieking world-destroying lunacy at the drop of a hat—no, that his attitude was just a flimsy mask to said lunacy.

Precisely for that reason, she couldn't bring herself to think on something besides 'avoid at all costs make him _switch off_ the friendly act'. Her first encounter with the Rinnegan was one encounter more than she would ever wish to have.

"I'm not sure where we are…" she cleared her throat and tried to use her most formal voice "according to what I heard, this is a world where not even our language is known. You were caught by some kind of sorcerer; he put you under a stasis spell and called the best medics around the world to heal you… the mission arrived to me, and here I am."

Uchiha Obito looked mechanically to the floor. "And he… is he the corpse at your feet? Did you kill him? And why are you…?" he stopped and snickered.

Sakura was too out of it to really pay attention to his weird comment "He tried to murder me and harvest your eyes. It wouldn't do if the Rinnegan and Mangekyo get used in a weird ritual or something." Although, now that she had time to think more calmly, she couldn't decide if letting such weapons in the hands of that madman or the other was any betterment of the situation. "Besides, those could be the only way to go back to Konoha." She ignored studiously the very high possibility that he wouldn't take her with him.

"I don't think my Sharingan works that way" mused aloud the man, as if she wasn't there at all. "But I don't know about the Rinnegan… it may be possible to expand the limitations of my Sharingan's space-manipulation with the gravity manipulation of the Path of Pain, but to jump to an inhabited world with its own language and architecture? The most I've been able to do was connect with the inherit pocket dimension of my own Magenkyo…"

To the young medic, hearing him talk like that almost shouted at her 'Oh, I've jumped to a new world—just another curiosity of my Sharingan'. She couldn't stop herself from speaking "Uh… Uchiha-san?"

"Yee~s, Sakura-sensei? What can this useless _ossan_ do for yaaa~?"

She decided to ignore his idiotic voice "What do you know about other worlds, Uchiha-san?"

The man raised his eyes and put a finger in his chin "What I know, let me see… Ah, yes I know-" he hit an open palm with a punch, and his eyes curved in an eye-smile "-Nothing at all!"

"You outta be shitting me!" Sakura burst out angrily, feeling a vein pop in her forehead. "Are you impersonating Kakashi just to piss me off?"

"Impersonating _Kakashi_?" he exclaimed, honestly startled. "The bastard is the one who keeps impersonating _me_! I've heard rumors about how he mocks me about all those times I couldn't arrive on time! They _weren't_ lame excuses, it was all the truth! Because the Uchiha clan thought that _I _was a useless disgrace and kept assigning me _stupid_ chores to complete before they let me go to meet _my_ team I was always _late_" he was doing weird emphasis in random words, as if he was singing something. Then he growled under his breath "I enjoyed _oh, so much_ killing that damn old lady that kept asking me to help her cross the street_…_"

'_I'm finding a lot of crazy fucks around here'_ commented that aggressive side inside Sakura's head. She ignored it in pro of musing out loud "I remember when Naruto and I forced him to go through every one of those moronic excuses… I henged as an old lady and made him climb a mountain to take me home, and we both did two children that asked him to take down a cat from a tree… and then we had him shopping with us…"

Uchiha Obito exploded in giggles "You did that? Awesome!" he clapped happily. "Just for that, I'll take you with me to the other world if when I find the way to replicate what happened." He made some hand seals "It doesn't work…" He commented casually, "Sakura-sensei…"

The atmosphere between them was abruptly crushed under a wave of his Killing Intent, so effortlessly that it made it even more obvious that the easygoing air was a false charade to begin with.

"_What did you do to my __**eyes**__?_"

Shit. Shit. Shit. There it was; the irrational homicide. That affable mask was cracking in front of her, and seeing him stare wide-eyed at her was more horrifying than anything non-Bijuu related had any right to be. Sakura felt some moisture gather on her palms and an almost unbearable urge to run the hell away from him, but she knew that doing it would only anger him further.

She forced herself to keep a steady voice "I don't know. He had you here for three months, so—"

"You said _two_ months…" his voice was dangerously losing decibels.

"I was unconscious one month with the wounds that Madara gave me, so I've been here just two months and just started working on missions to get shelter, food and clothes" she explained hurriedly. "The sorcerer was going on about doing obedience rituals and using the eye of Samsara, so he might've done something to you…"

His glare was powerful, but then he frowned probingly "There are some residues of the abilities of the Rinnegan…I see that you aren't lying—that's the Naraka path" his voice was light again, and she breathed quietly a sigh of relief "Sorry for scaring you, Sakura-sensei."

She would've said that _he didn't scare her, thank you very much,_ but that would count as lying to an unstable lie-detector nutcase with the power to crush her into a pulp—although without the Sharingan and Rinnegan a great chunk of the invincibility went several notches down.

"Maybe you should check them out" said Obito, sitting in the bed as if nothing wrong had happened. "You are a great medic, if you could patch me up…"

She did just that, albeit with certain reluctance. And she discovered the problem _'It's like Erza-chan… the regeneration process is messing with his optical nerves and eyes. But why only there? Why is it only in the eyes? His body seems to be normal, except for that high regeneration cells…' _

She gulped. Could she risk telling him that it was actually her fault? But really, what option did she have? It would be pretty moronic from her if she just lied—and he wouldn't allow her to keep quiet either, she had to tell him something…

"I-I'm sorry… I think it was my fault" she said. "Your body was crumbling and I had to make some risky procedure using some local healing techniques... but they apparently have negative effects on chakra users..."

"Oh, I see. It's alright, you saved my life after all" he nodded genially. "And you are one of the best medics out there, so you'll surely find a cure to this too."

There wasn't any veiled threat in his words, but it wasn't needed. Sakura knew that he could flip on her if she dared to say no.

"For now, I'll take a leaf from your book and search for a way to get food, clothes and shelter" he looked around him and laughed merrily "Found them! What do you say, Sakura-sensei? Do you like this place?"

She jumped back, waving her hands in front of her to try and shoo the very idea of living with him "Ah- I have already… established myself in this world, in a guild, to be precise. They would start making questions and searching for me if I disappear…" probably.

"A guild? What is that?"

"It's like a hidden village, but at a lesser size. One can get some missions and info from there."

Tobi was nodding as she spoke. Then he tilted his head "That actually doesn't sound bad… which guild did you join?"

Sakura didn't want to tell him. If things continued like that, Tobi would join the guild too and it would just suck so bad to have that raving lunatic near… "Fairy Tail" She… couldn't even try to lie in front of him.

"What did you say? Oh, is that in the foreign language?" he asked.

"Yes… It means _Yosei no Shippo_."

Tobi laughed cheerfully "Sounds like a cute name! It fits you, Sakura-sensei" then he stood up and inspected carefully Michelangelo's corpse, before putting over himself a strong Genjutsu. There was Michelangelo, beaming proudly at her. "At least I can still do normal jutsu… How do I look? Do you think I can pull it off?"

"Oh, don't worry. Just act like yourself and you'll have him nailed down" she deadpanned. "And you would probably need to learn the language. His name… is Michelangelo Mauvais, a Count apparently. He hired me to heal his wife…"

"I'm—I mean, Tobi's my wife?" Uchiha Obito, who apparently wanted her to call him Tobi, asked her with some revulsion "What kind of depravity was done to my wife while she was out?!"

Sakura felt sickened at the implications "I don't know. I don't want to think about it either. What I know is that your wife was in a stasis spell that kept her alive for three months… she should be fine if she doesn't overexerts herself. That includes avoiding heavy jutsu and messing with her eyes."

"Then I suppose that everything is in order—Oh, wait" Tobi made some hand seals again and shouted "Katon: Goukaku no Jutsu!" Sakura stepped back at the raw energy of the fireball, that burnt for at least three minutes consuming Michelangelo's rests. "There, now _everything_ is in order! Thank you so much for healing my beautiful, marvelous, smartest and most masculine wife! She's most grateful too!" he raised the bare blackened cranium of the real count and made it nod while he said in an overly high voice "Yes, yes, thank you! I'm so happy that my handsome, marvelous and most masculine husband found such wonderful medic for me!"

"YOU DAMN—" Sakura cut her instinctual rant and shook her head resignedly. "Just give me the jewels, Mr. Mauvais!"

"But of course, let me see… where did I leave those things?" asked himself Tobi, apparently enjoying too much his new role. He started looking around madly, and then went out of the door, rummaging in drawers and bookshelves, over the tables and inside the armors.

Sakura entered the dinning room, where she found Tobi's butt pointing to the air and moving rhythmically to some unheard tune while his owner searched under a table. She now really face-palmed "They look like normal ryo bills!"

"Ah, you were talking about money! I didn't know what those Jeuieris were!"

"Yes, it was my fault" recognized the girl. "Actually, I don't think I need them. I'll go out now."

"_Nonsense!_ I must simply give you all those Yew-jutsus! You healed my manwife!" then he looked at her with his mocking black eyes. "And I'll give you a shirt, too."

Sakura looked down, realizing that she was in her beloved Sarashi (that she had refused to stop using it) and the long frilly pants that Eloise insisted on calling 'underwear'—damn, she had been parading half-naked in front of Tobi!

'_God, no, kill me, kill me!'_ some raging voice shouted in her head. _'Was that why Tobi kept sickering and giggling like Kakashi reading his Icha-Icha? NOoOOoo! Pervert PIG! KYAAA!'_

"You can use my bathroom too!" he shouted from the other room. "You _stink_!"

Sakura could hardly believe that the man that almost destroyed the world could act as such imbecilic chimp. She shook her head, trying violently to rid of the revolting thoughts, but only being successful in realizing how stiff and dirty her unwashed hair was. And of course, when she raised her hand to try and put her locks behind her ear, she realized that she still had Michelangelo's blood plastered along her arm.

It was with a suffering sigh and shudder that she decided to search for a bathroom and put back Porliusyca's black dress.

* * *

For the fortieth time that day, she thanked the gods that Tobi decided to go around by himself instead of latching to her. The sun was already going out, and she was only moving by sheer willpower. She didn't want to spend the night near that man, and in her opinion camping in the forest was a damn invitation for him to go and mess with her again.

By the time she reached the train tracks, she was already exhausted and in need of some urgent sleep. At least she had all the money of the mission, the bills wrinkled and in a sad state caused by the man's overenthusiasm when chucking them unceremoniously on some random leather bag.

"Damn that bastard" she growled under her breath, feeling her characteristic bravery returning now that she wasn't in front of him. "What are the chances…?"

The majority of the ride she spent musing grouchily and puzzling out the information she got on the mansion. It came easily, almost as if it was waiting for her to believe it and keep on with her life. But, could she? The situation was way beyond suspicious without taking in account the almost null survival chances of them when they arrived to that place, but adding the little pushes and continuous coincidences. Maybe it would be better to act as if everything was a Genjutsu designed to fool her into a false state of complacence…

But what about Eternano, and magic, and the people? Where they fake too?

The shadows made by the trees abruptly were cut when the train crossed to a colorful, bright and ample field of flowers. Sakura was taken aback by the sudden beauty of the scenery, the vibrating pure energy in there… she wasn't a sensor type, but even she, in the high-speed vehicle and at almost twenty meters from the borders of the field, could feel the life oozing from that place.

If she was trapped inside the Moon Eye Genjutsu, she thought while looking at the impossibly gorgeous setting, that would mean that the beauty around her was created by Madara. Could that maniac really make a world like that?

'_But I haven't seen anything outside some pieces of land'_ whispered the voice of that aggressive she. _'Madara had a deep voice and perfect manners before snapping and crushing me…'_ Besides, she would just have to remember Michelangelo or even Tobi… appearances deceive.

Those striking flowers could be poisonous. _That_ was Madara's style.

'_Look underneath the underneath…'_

**oOo**

Magnolia looked as glowing and strong as always—no, this time, with the bizarre mission behind her, a good hour of sleep and a bag full of money resting on her hip, it looked even more inviting than before. The streets where sluggishly waking up and the people walked around doing their humble chores to stay inside society. The humid air, product of the lagoon, and the strong sunrays that reflected against a great amount of white buildings made it feel almost as if she was in the coast enjoying a vacation.

While trying to arrive to Fairy Tail to report back from her mission, a shop caught her eye. It had a tabloid that read 'Heart Kreus', and displayed the most fashionable and cool clothes she had ever seen. It wasn't like Porliusyca's minimalistic design, nor the guild's bizarre tendencies, nor Eloise's over-the-top-for-being-a-maid dresses. It was a light cloth, blue pants, bright shirts—and look at those shoes!

She looked down to her black dress, courtesy of Porlyusica. Then at the bulky leather bag tied to her waist. Finally, she decided that Tobi's money was too creepy to have stored in there.

Three hours passed.

The bustling streets of midday stopped reflexively to gape at the _mountain_ of packs apparently floating alone: it was at least two meters of piled multicolored shopping bags...

"This must be one of those mage's doing!"

"I-It has legs!"

"What the he—shit you're right! RUUUN!"

Sakura felt her shoulders drop a bit. The civvies in Konoha would just chalk it up to some freakishly strong ninja and go on with their lives, but here they start shrieking and running in circles?—she sighed tiredly. Ah, nothing would be like her home village. Even if Magnolia was just prettier, the people living there were a bunch of pansies…

Suddenly, some alarm bells started sounding and people started to _really_ run around and scream.

'_Are they serious?!'_

Apparently they were. The buildings at her side started compressing and moving to both sides of the main avenue, and she had to jump to the side to avoid a crack in the floor.

"He's here!"

"Amazing! Look, mommy, it's Gildartz!"

"We'll finally see if all that waste of money was worth it…"

Sakura shivered; there was the unbalanced typical energy of a Mage in the equivalent amount to Kisame's monstrous chakra, but more volatile, aggressive, as if the energy had a mind on its own and wanted to just _destroy something_ until it was a pile of dust…

"Oi, Gildartz! Is that bag-monster yours?!"

"Y-You madman! Take it off the streets! It's scary, dammit!"

Her pulse accelerated—the _being_ was right behind her… Sakura couldn't stay in her current defenseless position anymore, and dropped her baggage, jumping forward and turning to where the mage –probably that Gildartz– was. She was expecting to see somebody looking like a failed attempt of Bijuu, and that's why she gawked when she found a simple man with an uneven beard and scarred face, his red hair glistening with orange hues under the midday sun.

He laughed cheerfully, his brown eyes sparkling with mirth.

"Hahahaha! Bag-monster? It's just a little girl, you chickens!"

""EEEEHHH?!""

Shaking his head at the bewildered villagers, the man made an inquiring face "Why are you here? You should be up there with the others, don't you?"

The kunoichi narrowed her eyes and put a hand on her hip "Why would I have to hide? Are you dangerous?"

"Well, not exactly" he shrugged. "But the protocol says that people shouldn't be down here and-"

"Oi, brat! Keep walking! We can't be over here all day!" exclaimed an old man.

"Oh! Yes, yes, I'm sorry!" the redhaired mage scratched the back of his head in a very Naruto-like gesture, and kept walking. "Well, I'll get going now, lassie. See ya!"

And he continued his path striding carelessly, whistling a cheery tune.

"Oi, bag-monster sis! Are you a mage?" asked a young woman with spiky green hair and a work suit.

"Who are you calling bag-monster?! My name is Sakura! Sakura Haruno! I'm a Fairy Tail Mage!"

The young woman raised both her thumbs "Really? That's so cool! And your hair is awesome!"

"That…" she shook her head, and quickly gathered her things before the street moved again. Sakura continued walking, absently jumping to the side to avoid the reshaping boulders in the street and shaking her head. She couldn't keep the smile off her face… maybe the people there wasn't _so_ bad.

So it was with a reluctant smile that she arrived to Fairy Tail, quickly acknowledging the idiocy of going on a shopping spree when she didn't even have a room. Entering the guild, she found everyone enraptured in an animated conversation with Gildartz, who was nodding or shaking his head apparently unfazed with the attention. Then he, along with the Master, climbed the stairs to the second floor –which was S-Class only.

She let her pile of things at the side and looked around, finding Chico behind the bar cleaning some glasses and everyone returning to their seats talking animatedly.

"There you are, Chico!" she called. "What do I have to do to get that floor at Fairy Hills?"

"Just talk with the manager, he'll give you the keys in the moment if you have the money" The young girl looked up and her eyes almost bulged out, pointing to the mountain behind Sakura. "How-When—Is that yours?"

"Y-Yes…" Sakura looked to her things, bemused. "Why? Is something wrong?"

"All of that, it has the Heart Kreuss Symbol! You must've spent a fortune!"

"That's SO not the weird thing", spoke the half-naked little-Sasuke lookalike. "How did you get all of that here?"

"Duh, he used some magic, of course" pointed Cana.

"Actually, I just carried it here" Sakura clarified with a furrowed brow. Surely it wasn't that weird to have that?

"With magic" nodded the young brunette.

"No, with my hands."

Macao drank a gulp of some alcoholic beverage and looked interestedly at her "What, really? You used some magical enhancement?"

"No… they're just _clothes_" she stopped and looked contemplatively to the pile of things. It was light enough to not require chakra enhancement, and she already had the extra boost of that Eternano too… it was slowly making its place inside her, like some extra cape of chakra but a little more energetic, if that made any sense.

Wakaba was trying to lift all the things, and making some funny faces while he scrunched his nose in exertion. He could barely lift it, but the bags loosened from the ropes and scattered everywhere.

"Oh, you SO used magic to carry _that_!" he huffed finally, plopping back in his chair.

"What are you doing?! Do you have any idea how much time I spent tying them up?!" she exclaimed angrily.

"Admit it, you used magic" little Sasuke pointed an accusing finger to her with a scowl.

Reedus shook his head "Gray, your clothes."

"Oh, not again!"

The little boy looked around mortified. Sakura snorted and crouched to tie her shopping bags together.

"Well, Chico, can we go to Fairy hills after I speak with the Master?"

"You still have money after buying all those things?" she questioned skeptically. Sakura nodded. She had put apart the 100,000 jewels to the apartment, and spent the rest in her things. As it was, she still had some stacks of bills in her bag.

The voice of Master Makarov sounded from the second floor "Oh, Sakura, you're back already?"

"Yes, master" she stepped forwards as he jumped deftly to a nearby table. "Do I have to make a written report of the mission?"

"Why would I want _paperwork_?" asked the Master, as if the notion was the most foolish thing he'd ever heard. "Did something go wrong?"

'Go wrong' was putting it mildly. Still, Sakura suspected that telling him about Tobi was a sure way to make more trouble than it was worth… on the other hand, she had pledged alliance to the guild. But if she reported something about Michelangelo's death, considering the strict rules that the Council and Kingdom had about murder she would be in troubles… Besides she was a kunoichi from Konoha first and foremost, and returning back to home was more important than anything. Calling attention to Tobi would be a sure-way to lose her possibly only ticket to get back home.

"Not exactly" she said, shoving her guilt to the side. "The guy was a weird guy, and ordered me to take back all the money he could put inside my bag. He attacked me when I refused" she lied straight-faced. "And I decided to keep the client happy, so I took the money." She pointed with a thumb to the mountain of clothes.

Makarov frowned "He attacked you because you didn't take the money?"

"Only a sloppy punch to the face, I dodged" she shrugged. "I think he's bad in the head, so I don't want to make any big fuzz… besides, he's filthy rich and his wife is all fine now, so…" she looked to the leather bag. It was at the half of its capacity, even after spending more than five thousand grands in those expensive clothes. She didn't feel a spec of guilt for spending Tobi's money, anyway. Even if it wasn't his but from the dead—okay, she felt guilty there… but it was just going to be in Tobi's hands anyway…

That was the ninja life, she supposed. Asking oneself about the morality of things on a daily basis, except if you were Naruto or some unrepentant amoral freak like Madara or Tobi.

Makarov looked keenly at her for some seconds, before stroking his chin and nodding "Well, I'm glad to see you are fine. As long as you did what you think is the right thing… I supposed there's no problem in taking an extra bonus."

Sakura nodded and kept her face casual "So, if that's all…"

"You're fine to go" shrugged unconcernedly the little man, taking a swig of a mug of beer at his side. "Did you find where to stay?"

"Chico's going to take me to Fairy Hills" Sakura made a motion to the girl, who nodded and left the bar.

"I'll go out for a sec, master", Chico said passively.

The master made an affirmative sound and went back to his wine. Sakura sighed and followed the younger girl, distractedly lifting her baggage with both hands and balancing it with her chest.

"There's no magic!"

"She was telling the truth?!"

"Oh, enough with that" she said shaking her head.

She walked in a companionable silence with Chico, until the feeling of magic surprised her. Turning back and down, she spied little Erza walking quietly behind them.

"Everything alright, Erza?" she asked concerned. The redhead's eyes were a little puffy, she had been crying.

"Yes. I'm also staying at Fairy Hills, so I'm following the way… Sorry if it inconveniences you"

At least her voice was as steady and blunt as ever. "Of course not, Erza-chan. How about your eye?"

"I think I'm getting used to it. I don't feel dizzy anymore." She gave her a little smile.

Sakura recalled Tobi's plight with his eyes, and grimaced "I'll check you after I leave all of this somewhere, just wait…"

"There's something I'd like to ask…" began Erza. "Why do you have all that at your back? Isn't it a little excessive?"

"Oh, this?" Sakura giggled. "Well, the clothes are so wonderful! I've never seen something like this before, so handy and comfortable…"

"And they are beautiful" added Chico with a dreamy voice. "You're so lucky, Sakura, getting all that dough in your first mission. But it's no good if you waste everything in an hour."

"I know how to administrate my money" she pointed shrugging her free shoulder. "And besides, we all work to get money, and the money exists to make our lives better. What's wrong with giving oneself some presents? I think that if someone risks their lives to fight some monsters or bandits, they are SO entitled to pamper themselves with the reward."

"Well, you have a point in there" Chico scratched her cheek. "And you really chose the best! Going to the great designer Heart Kreuss, you surely have taste!"

"They are excellent designs" she nodded. "The lines are cute, and more importantly, _functional_. One wouldn't want to be impeded by some extravagant accessory or dress while fighting, it could be deadly" she remembered her young days and her clothes. It was the cutest thing she had, that red dress, but it was also the most impractical a ninja could use. Not to say that it wasn't functional, but for a real ninja it could be a lot better. "I got some good skirts and even those 'jeans' things along some blouses…" Then she chuckled "I admit I took one of those 'cocktail' dresses because they were gorgeous, but it was just a little whim. And those heels where like my boots but close-toed…"

Chico nodded and started rambling about the wonders of that designer's high heels and other things. Sakura had the sudden thought that she could be Shikamaru's _and_ Ino's daughter, and looked quietly to the sky trying to keep the memories at bay. She just had to discover what went wrong with Tobi and hope he would keep his word of taking her back with him, and then she'd be back in Konoha.

No, there was barely a village standing in that crater. She would be back _to the war_.

Damn…

* * *

**A/N:** Short today, because I felt inspired at work and I wrote it there on my tablet. Thanks for your feedback, and please continue with the reviews: I know that it's a weak work at best, but still I'd like to read your thoughts about it.

Tobi and Gildartz today, and of course Erza, because Erza's great. I'll start the real story in the next chapter…

Kisses~


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